JxHQ: Harley Quinn: Soliloquy
by princessebee
Summary: A rehabilitated Harley Quinn tries to find her place in a society she is no longer a part of. But can she truly leave the shadows of her past behind? Warning for mild themes and references to violence.
1. Author's Note

**Author's Note**

With the excitement of _The Dark Knight_ mounting, I've got Joker-Fever something fierce and found myself driven to write this story.

It's given me the opportunity to explore some of my own ideas about Harley and her relationship with The Joker.

As an old-school HQ fan, her relationship with Joker is an absolutely crucial element to me. I was horrified when they were broken up and think it is completely out of character for Harley.

Not that I don't think Harley can stand alone as a character, or that she hasn't got her own adventures to have – because she absolutely can and does, and I love to see them.

But the one thing that should always be constant, in my opinion, is her all-consuming obsessive love for The Joker.

This story is my attempt to find a balance between the depiction of the characters and their relationship in both the cartoon and the comics.

Whilst I absolutely adore both the comics and the cartoon, my issues with them in relation to HQ and J are as follows:

The cartoon, being made for kids and being, well, a cartoon, pushed the bounds of reality on many levels. (eg: the concept of 'parole' from an asylum, these dangerous psychos being allowed time in a 'common room'), so ends up being a bit too 'unreal' for me (hilarious, I know, when you consider the material we're talking about)

On the other hand, in the comic things can and do get a lot nastier and uglier, the boundaries are pushed a bit more, things can be more 'realistic' and outrageous. Unfortunately, as far as the comics are concerned, to keep HQ in character in terms of her lashing out at Joker when he 'betrays' her, it requires pushing The Joker slightly out of character. The idea Mainstream Joker would tolerate it, is simply impossible. He wouldn't.

And while Harley might have every intention of opening up some whup-ass on Mainstream Mistah J, one thing would stop her before she actually gets there: fear. The very natural and sensible fear _of_ The Joker and the fear she would have of losing him.

I think for the writers, with how much they cared about her, breaking her up with The Joker was a protective measure; a need to 'save' her from the abusive relationship trap and see her get out there and get independent and stand up for herself. Which is pretty natural when you care about someone.

But, in doing so, they also removed something absolutely integral to Harley Quinn's character, what makes her who she is.

It was The Joker who tipped Harley over the edge. Without The Joker, she might still be insane, she'd certainly still have her unique personality, but she would no longer have the need to _be_ 'Harley Quinn'.

The idea also, that you could come out of a relationship with someone like Joker reasonably unscathed is impossible. The life she led – in and out of Arkham, being an accomplice to horrific acts (Joker's attempts to murder all the babies during NML for example) being absolutely insane, suffering severe psychological abuse, etc, etc… well, even if fully rehabilitated, adjustment would not be as easy as it's depicted. You would naturally carry some very deep scars.

It is also my opinion her infatuation with The Joker is ultimately the focal element of her life; otherwise her motivation falls away. And you don't just 'get over' something like that. As long as he's in her life, I don't think she could.

So here I am, attempting to do a lot of things: depict a more 'realistic' view of a rehabilitated Harley, remain true to her obsessive infatuation with The Joker and what that would actually _feel_ like in a very real sense, and explore their relationship a little bit. Cos one thing is for sure: they _do_ have a relationship. HQ definitely changed _something_ in The Joker and he knows it. I don't think he likes it, but he knows it.

I was a bit unsure about depicting sex between them, as I'm one of those people who feels Joker is at least eighty-per cent asexual. But as for that other twenty per cent – well, I'm sure it happens between him and Harley – I'm just not sure _how_. I've done my best. I am of the opinion Joker favours psychological torment to the mere physical though. I am also of the opinion he does love her, in his own very twisted way, and that he views her as one of his most special creations.

Not everyone is gonna agree with that, and that's totally fine. Personally, I really do like to see different depictions of this cos just about everyone has something interesting to say.

The canon I write in is a combination of the mainstream comics and the animated series. Basically I just pretty freely mix and match: leave in what I do like, ignore what I don't. :)

So this author's note is just to explain my intentions and reasonings because I know not everyone will agree completely with my depiction.

But I do hope that, regardless, you will enjoy it and my very deepest and sincerest thank yous to anyone who gives this fic a chance: I really appreciate it!

Oh and one last thing… if Harley seems like an unreliable narrator at times… she is. Heh.


	2. Chapter 1

**One**

She woke from a dream she could not remember. There were tears drying on her cheeks.

When she opened her eyes and saw what surrounded her; the small pinewood bookshelf topped with stuffed toys _(bells and motley, diamond patterned fabrics, painted cheeks…)_, a dressing table and chair, a tallboy with one of the top drawers pulled halfway out, scraps of colourful lingerie bursting from its mouth _(like fat fuzzy snakes from a tin)_, she sucked in a shallow breath and her heart-rate picked up speed, a staccato drumbeat thrumming double time against her sternum.

_This is not my home._ She thought, slightly panicked. _This is not my room. Where am I? Have I rumbled some poor sucker's digs for a place to hole up?_

She sat up on the bed, and pushed back a lock of stray hair, it dry and straw-like from the latest bleaching. She remembered getting that done, two days ago, sitting down in the salon's red-leather chair, smiling at Becky while the noxious smelling stuff was applied, handing over the cash while Becky told her she needed to come in more often for a deep conditioning treatment. They'd laughed, hadn't they, over the handfuls of hair that always came out, ruptured from their bed in her scalp by the powerful chemicals…

She remembered.

She reached over to the bedside table and fumbled for her pills, taking the two she was prescribed and washing them down with the glass of water that sat by them. She sat the glass back down and watched the pink glitter that swirled inside the plastic move and settle by the motion, dancing around the head of Ariel, Disney's the Little Mermaid.

This was her home. This was her room.

For almost one whole year now she had lived in this small apartment, nestled on top of the pizzaria that overlooked the bustling street set in the heart of Gotham's Piccolo Italia.

Of course. How could she forget?

She got out of bed and stretched, the shorts of her pink babydoll pajamas riding up on her thighs, her midriff bared as the button down top hitched a little. The stretch felt good, so she did it again. The contents of her head felt like marshmallow, squishy and dense and feeling the lengthening of her limbs sharpened her a little. She scratched around her bellybutton, pulled the shorts out of the crevice of her bottom and padded towards the bathroom where she sat down for a pee, then checked the scales.

One hundred and fifteen pounds. Good. Most of it was muscle, too. She wouldn't mind gaining a little more muscle weight. Though she had plumped up a little when she first settled down, owing to the fact she spent most nights slumped on her couch shovelling in pizza sent up from downstairs, she was back in tip top shape again.

After weighing herself, she stood in front of the mirror and practiced her smile.

She did this every day. She had to. If she didn't, she was fairly certain she would forget how to. And then, when that happened, everyone would know.

Everyone would know she was faking it.

It looked good. Today it looked so good it almost convinced even her. So far, she hadn't been able to do that yet, though it seemed to work on everyone else. To her, it still looked painted on.

She thought she could pinpoint the exact moment the drugs began taking effect. Like a wet cloud, billowing out into the corners of her brain, smog to obscure it all. Dr. Leland would say it was impossible.

"_Congratulations, Harleen." Dr. Leland was smiling, a smile she hadn't given her for years. "You passed your final competency evaluation with flying colours and have been declared rehabilitated and fit to re-enter society. You've made incredible progress. You should be very proud. I am."_

"_Call me Harley," she had said automatically, her smile splitting upwards, "Everyone does."_

_She'd said that since the age of fourteen. But saying it then felt – odd. Like the lines for a part that wasn't hers. The smile had felt scratched on, the flesh of her face plastic that would stretch and tear from the pressure of it._

"_You said that the first day we met, do you remember?" Dr. Leland smiling at her. She realised Dr. Leland didn't see the small tears in the film laid over her skull, that she was playing her role convincingly. _

"_I… think so…" She'd felt the mask slip, a little frown furrowing her forehead. Did she remember? She wasn't sure… better pretend. "Oh yes, that's right. I often say it."_

"_Not anymore." Dr. Leland had stood, picking up the slim manila folder that had sat on the polished wood desk in her office at Arkham. "Due to the… reputation you've built up for yourself, the Arkham Board and Gotham Council thought it best you were reassigned a new identity. Do you remember us discussing this a couple of weeks ago?"_

_She did remember that. "Yes, of course. Did I get to choose my name?" She beamed up at Dr. Leland as the doctor had stepped around her desk and came around to where Harley sat in front of it. Dr. Leland had raised a sardonic eyebrow._

"_Unfortunately, the name you nominated – err – Busty Funbags –" Why not go out with one last gag? " – was not considered, ah, subtle enough. We've suggested Amanda Hart." She'd slid the folder in front of Harley and flicked it open, where the requisite documents were all assembled; birth certificate, passport, driver's licence – everything she could need. _

_The grin that half-quirked a corner of her mouth had felt genuine. "I'm Jewish, Dr. Joan."_

_Dr. Leland shrugged her shoulders lightly, crossing her arms over the front of her white coat. "Not anymore. Unless you have serious objections…? You were never observed to be practicing…"_

"_Nah, nah it's okay. Okey dokey, even. A-Okay." Her voice sounded hollow, reassurance by rote. The large window behind Dr. Leland's desk faced West; the sun was beginning to set, sending stark, warm rays over the bare back yard of the Asylum grounds. You could always stare into the sun when it was setting, and she did so now; its fire-orange speckling in her gaze, watching as it formed a sickle moon sinking down over the horizon – _

_A sickle moon, or a smile turned upside down._

"_Har – Amanda?" Dr. Leland's hand was on the back of the chair she sat in, a worried note in her voice. She bent at the waist to look her in the eye. "Amanda, it isn't unusual for someone in your situation to go through a period of depression as they readjust to a normal life. Feelings of isolation, detachment, fear and confusion are common. We will of course provide you with a referral to a reputable therapist, and it is a condition of your release you attend twice-weekly sessions for a full twelve months but – well, Amanda – Harley." And Dr. Leland had laid a warm brown hand on one of her own cold, pale ones, squeezing it gently. "If you ever need to – please don't hesitate to phone me. "_

_She'd spent countless hours in Joan Leland's office over the years, first as an intern and then as an inmate. But she'd never really looked around. _He'd_ always said that was a fault of hers, one amongst her many. After all, how did _He_ always manage to get out? More than one way to kill a monkey, Harley-Girl, _He'd_ tittered, paying attention can reap unexpected rewards at opportune moments._

_She looked around the office then as Dr. Leland had taken her seat again and explained that one of the city's leading citizens, Bruce Wayne, offered a two-year pension to all of the Asylum's considered incorrigibles, if they proved that consideration wrong and were rehabilitated. Part of helping them get back on their feet, and so helping Gotham to continue to elevate her reputation, was the general idea, Dr. Leland said. So initially, Har – Amanda, would not need to worry about a job, but of course, she would need to demonstrate a smooth integration back into the workforce. That was another requirement. She was being provided with references for some basic career options. But Wayne Corp fully supported her to seek further education, if that was what she wanted, since she would not be able to practice psychiatry again._

_Dr. Leland's office walls were filled with bookshelves, choking with books. Books stacked in rows, books piled on top of those rows, in front of them too, more books behind the rows of books. Dr. Leland had been at Arkham Asylum for almost twenty-five years, long beyond what many of the doctors stayed. She was not looking for glory. She genuinely wanted to help. Somehow, she resisted the pull and tug of Arkham's mad tide, kept her head above the insanity that threatened to drown all who came into contact with the madhouse. Probably through the books, Harley had realised. They were her anchor to reality. Escape in their pages._

_It was not a big office, but it was big enough. Dr. Leland did not see patients in this office, not for sessions. None of the Doctors could hold sessions in their offices. Not unless they wanted their offices to resemble a padded cell. Too many of Arkham's inmates were too dangerous to be allowed within range of anything that might be utilised as a weapon – even a room full of books._

_Even in the therapy rooms, the couches and chairs were bolted to the floor._

_Come to think of it, this was the first time she'd sat in this office without her hands restrained._

"_Amanda?"_

_She'd started and looked at Dr. Leland. From the doctor's raised brows, she realised it had not been the first time her new name had been uttered._

"_Sorry." She'd smiled, big and wide, hitching her shoulders up into a sheepish shrug around her ears. "It's gonna take some gettin' used to, I think."_

_She'd often imagined leaving Arkham Asylum as a free woman, the feelings of joy and elation that might overwhelm her. Saw herself cartwheeling and back-flipping her way down its long, ugly grey drive, leaving its gothic turrets and towers stabbing the sky behind her, her back turned away from its hundreds of blinking black windows for good. 'Sayonara, suckers!' she'd salute at the end of the drive, then hop on a motorbike (she wasn't sure why a bike, or how it had got there, but it seemed to fit the general celebratory air of the fantasy) and gunning the motor, tearing off, yahooing at the beating thundering sky of Gotham, triumphant and free, free, free._

_Instead she felt fear._

_She left in an ill-fitting set of jeans and a t-shirt, scuffed sneakers, an over-sized coat covering her shivering, small body. She'd lost almost thirty pounds in the last eighteen months, and she hadn't been a big girl to begin with. There was a small bag in one hand, holding the coat shut tight with the other. There was a car waiting for her, a car waiting to drive her to her new home, the one the Wayne Corporation had arranged. Dr. Leland was by her side, a gentle look of compassion on her face. She looked down the drive to where the Asylum's gates waited, the one break in the high brick wall that surrounded the compound, the armed guards poised to open them for her._

_To open them for her… without coercion or threat. They would let her go, freely._

_She had stopped short in her tracks, fighting with the sudden urge to go running back inside, to hurtle towards the Maximum Security wing, where she hadn't been for over six months, and plead with the guards to let her back into her old cell. _

"_Are you alright, Amanda?" Dr. Leland was frowning with worry. She'd swallowed, hard, and attempted a little smile. Fear, like loathing, choking her, swelling inside her breast until she thought it might burst outwards, spraying it in a hot gush, like Professor Crane's gas, over the doctor, and the guard, and the driver who waited._

_Once inside the car, she'd twisted around in the seat and watched as Arkham shrank into the distance, Dr. Leland waving to her, and set her fingers up against the back windscreen. The fear had turned into an ache, dull as a bruise, as though she might get used to it._

_The tears had been cold on her cheeks._

Amanda slowed into a walk on the corner, one block from her apartment, steadying her breathing into recovery mode. One big suck in through the nostrils, three short gusts out through the mouth. She kept the pattern up as she walked, her heartbeat slowing down to normal, feeling her sweat sizzling hot on her flesh, knowing she'd be flushed red all over her face, down her neck and over her breast and arms. A real classy sight, she thought wryly, reekin' to high heaven and drippin' all over the pavement! But then, there weren't many out at this time of the morning to see her.

She jogged ten miles every morning, except for Sunday. It took her an hour and a half, which she'd steadily reduced from just over two. It was good for a lot of things: kept her figure trim, her fitness high, her muscles loose and cleared her head. Maybe it even got the medication working faster, her blood racing the way it did.

When she got to the laneway two doors down from the pizzaria, she turned and headed towards her front door, set in the back of the building, facing an unexpectedly pleasant alley-way. Once there she stretched, enjoying the tension in her warmed muscles, pleased with how far she had to go before she really felt a good stretch. A side split up the wall, both sides. Hips flat and square on the right side, just a small gap between her crotch and the wall on her left. She grabbed a water pipe set against the wall and pulled herself in harder, closing the gap.

The flyscreen backdoor of the pizzaria flew open and the patriarch of the business waddled out, a bulging garbage bag in either hand.

"Bonjiourno, bella!" he declared upon sight of her and she offered him a smile while he strode over to the dumpster and heaved the bags inside.

"Good mornin', Signore Ciccolina!" she replied and felt pleased. She'd sounded really chirpy.

"What is this!" he came forward, his grey moustaches quivering on his upper lip, gesturing towards her with both hands. "You gettin' too skinny again, bella! You need to eat a bit more, eh! You come down tonight and have dinner in the restaurant, our treat, okay?"

She giggled, pushing strands of sweaty hair off her neck, and swinging her waterpack around to fumble for her keys. "I'd love to, Signore, really, but if I don't watch what I eat, I'll be kicked off the squad! Thanks anyway!"

He clicked his tongue and shook his head, turning to go back inside. "Well, you just come down if you change your mind, okay bella? You take it easy now! You alone too much for a young girl like you!"

She opened her mouth to respond, something bright and witty, a little playful. Something about how she was too busy to be alone, but snappier than that. But in the end nothing came out, and she stood there, in the early morning sun, sweat steaming off her over-heated skin, with her mouth open like one of those plastic circus clowns, just waiting for a ball to be shot into it.

But Signore Ciccolina had already gone back inside, the flyscreen banging shut behind him.

Another day of freedom had started.

Back inside her apartment, she began to peel off her sports gear, leaving them in a sweaty trail on the baby-pink carpet. Pink shorts. Pink sports top. Pink bra. Pink panties. Off came the pink and white Reeboks, followed by the sopping wet socks. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of her ripe feet hit her nostrils.

"Peeeee-YEW!" she declared for no one's benefit, and padded into the shower, switching the faucets on and pulling her blonde hair from its twin plaits and fixing it into a messy bun on the top of her head. Then she stepped under the luke-warm stream. She never liked to shower too hot after an intense workout.

She pulled on the hot pink exfoliating mitts and scrubbed her body down hard. Then she cleansed her face and gave it a gentle exfoliation too. On impulse, she took her hair out and turned the hot tap off altogether, squeaking a little as cold water gushed over her head and shoulders, her reddened skin slowly fading back to its normal pallor.

She switched the shower off and stepped out onto the fluffy pink bathmat, frowning as she noticed that the shower curtain, a white number emblazoned with bright pink hearts, was growing mottled green spots of mould along the bottom. She wrapped her hair in her pale-pink microfibre turban and wrapped a hot pink towel around her body.

A new colour, is what she had decided she'd needed, not long after moving into the little apartment. For a while now her surroundings had been defined by colours – black and red for her, purple and green for Him. But that was her old life. That was her old persona. Not her new one. Not Amanda Hart. Amanda Hart was not red and black, diamonds and jokers. No, Amanda Hart was, was –

She'd been pondering the question in front of the mirror, brushing her teeth, the brush going up and down and round and round just as she'd been taught in school, with the same precision and care. She'd noted then the fixtures of the bathroom – the tub, the toilet and the sink, even the walls of the cabinet – all of them a dusky pale pink. Old fashioned fixtures, in porcelain. Maybe fifty years old. Like something you'd see at Grandma's house. A pretty colour. Very feminine. A relative of red, of course. Lots of shades of it, all of them nice. Versatile. Went well with leopard print, too.

So it had been decided. Amanda Hart was –

Pink. Pink and white, but mostly pink.

It had helped her focus her mind, in those early months. She never went anywhere or did anything, so she had money to burn, thanks to Wayne Corp's pension and the low rent on the place. They'd chosen a nice place, one in a busy, bustling, yet safe part of town, and for a good price too, especially considering the place was in pretty good nick. The building was owned by the Ciccolina's of course, and they did a fair trade in the pizza business, calling themselves the best pizzas in Gotham for no small reason. Such was the demand for them they even did deliveries all the way over the other side of town, to the South and East. They hadn't minded her asking to paint the walls, said she could liven the place up any old how she liked. So she'd bought the colour – Rose Madder Lake it had been called – and painted each room, with the trim around the doors, the windows and the sideboards a stark white. How nice it was. A warm pink, with a bright glow to it. She'd lain on the floorboards in the bedroom afterwards and watched the sun's rays set the room spilling a warm caress of dusky rose over her, like a hug.

She scoured the flea-markets and second-hand shops for old wood furniture, and painted it white and baby pink. She found a cheap set of pale pink dining settings in Wal-mart for just thirty dollars, hot pink plastic tumblers, a fat squatting pink kettle, the toaster and the baking trays. The utensils came next, and the blender, plus the lovely pink enamelled pots and pans. Manufacturers understood anything could be an accessory these days – and with the right marketing, you could make the consuming public realise that too. It gave her a sense of continuity, and completeness to see everything matching so nicely, contrasting shades complementing each other in a perfect, ruddy harmony.

While filling her trolley full of a pink colander and breadbin, tea and coffee tins and two tall salt and pepper shakers she noticed, with a start, they were making the same goods in a bold, brassy shade of red. A tomato-ish sort of red, marked as 'chilli-red'. How strange, to feel her heart speed up at sight of it, a glimmer of recollection winking in her mind's darkness, of a time she would've – would've plotzed – at the sight, and crammed her trolley full of them all, to stow them in a storage unit somewhere until the time was right. Not then, not when their home changed locations so often, when it was so subject to destruction and demolition. When they were ready to settle down, she would be ready, she'd be able to produce it all, piece by shining piece and say _ta-daaa, you see, I've been prepared, we'll be snug as two bugs in a rug, Puddin'_. Domestic bliss, at last.

She hadn't even noticed she'd spiralled into fantasy, that there was no storage unit filled with chilli-red white goods. She wondered which one she'd hidden them in; there were so many, all over town. Then she shook it off and kept on going. It didn't matter. She was crazy then, and did crazy things. Then belonged to another girl. Not her. Not Amanda Hart.

No corner of the apartment escaped the spread of pink; like a creeping blush across the cheeks of a maiden it continued to fill the little place she had been told was her new home. It gave her something to do, to consume the hours that ticked over and over, endless and otherwise empty, in those first early months after her release. Something to surround herself with so that the walls of her mind did not echo, throwing her scattered thoughts back at her, where she could not cringe away from them. Something to focus on, so that she could ignore how big and empty the world suddenly seemed, how frighteningly vast.

She'd brought a guy back to the apartment, only once, four months ago now. He'd staggered back a little, in awe of the profuseness of the colour.

"_Lemme guess – ya favourite colour is pink, right?"_ and she'd laughed on cue.

"_What gave it away?"_ And handed him the pink mug of chocolate.

But he'd been perturbed by it, sitting uneasily on the candy pink sofa, surrounded by cushions in shades of fuschia, magenta, peach and flamingo. His eyes had flickered from one pink wall to the window, where a gauzy carmine curtain fluttered in the evening breeze.

It occurred to her then that maybe customisation like this wasn't regular. But it was important – didn't he see that – to put your mark on things?

She had toned and moisturised her face and body, rubbed the leave-in conditioner in her hair and brushed her teeth. Patted the eye cream in around her eyes, the lip cream on her lips. The same ritual, every day. She'd kept it up, even during – during.

And it had paid off. She looked good, for her age. Hard to believe it, how much time had passed since before and after. So much of that time ran together, the days spinning into months spiralling into years until it had all seemed one big mess of events, one after the other, not confined by the passage of time but taking place almost simultaneously, it seemed like. There had been no reason, after all, to keep the time. No reason, except perhaps one – but if she'd kept track for that one, she couldn't have borne it, because it would never have come. She'd learned to live with that, to have it ever hovering in an indefinite future.

Ten years. She looked at herself in the small bathroom mirror. There were faint, tiny crows feet in the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines around her mouth. Just little ones. But they reminded her, like the occasional silver grey hair did. Before, when she'd worn the makeup and the cowl all the time, she'd never noticed. What was there to notice? It hadn't mattered anyway.

But it had been ten years. Ten years since interning in Arkham Asylum to being released from it as a former inmate.

They'd kindly given Amanda Hart those ten years back – her new birth certificate listed a decade she had not been born in – but looking at herself in the mirror, with nothing but the flesh of her own face staring back at her, the woman who had once been Harley Quinn knew.

She was almost forty years old.


	3. Chapter 2

**Two**

She'd taken a day job as a receptionist and a weekend job as a waitress. Blonde and pretty, with her big smile and ebullient demeanour, she was ideal for both. How could they know she stood in front of the mirror every morning before leaving her pink apartment and practiced?

Once it had felt so easy. So easy to smile and crack a joke, to be the effusive extrovert, to capture the eye of the crowd and make them blink as she sparkled. But it was hard to follow the thread of her thoughts during that time – anytime she picked one up, it seemed to unravel and entwine with another, in turn it with another, until she was spending half the time trying to unpick the knot of memory and make sense of it. It was too difficult.

She thought it had something to do with her medication; it stripped all her thoughts back to their sparsest, had them falling in a linear fashion, like Dominos, except not one against the other, but side by side. So she couldn't connect any more to her thought streams of the other time, where those Dominos hadn't fallen one against the other either, but all out of turn and on top or beneath each other.

When she would get home at night, she'd sit on the couch and watch television, eating pizza the Cicciolina's sent up to her, always for free, always too much. She would never pay much attention to what she watched, except that she never watched the news. The news of Gotham was always far too depressing. _He_ had always enjoyed it, got a laugh out of it. She rather thought there might have been a time, right towards the end, where she had started to as well. But that was one more thing that was foggy, and she couldn't be certain. All she knew now was that she would avoid it at all costs. Wouldn't even glance at the newspaper headlines. It was always the same, anyway. Murder, death, tragedy, rape, kidnapping, assault, robbery, molestation, abuse, theft, destruction… etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah. Not to mention, of course… it was the easiest way to avoid…

But that one didn't even bear thinking about.

So after filling her home with pink, she filled her hours with work until she was too exhausted to do anything but sit on the couch and blink out to the boob tube, then pad out what was left with sleep. She grew numb from it. Every day she would wake and slowly don her new costume, slip on her new mask and assume her new persona. She was better at it than she ever thought she could be; no one suspected a thing. All those years of playing the clown had paid off after all. All day long she smiled and answered telephone calls and directed people to take a seat and took orders and delivered meals and playfully flirted and waved goodbye to her coworkers and caught the Gotham Monorail to her little apartment, kicked off her shoes and clambered into her pajamas, answered the door for her unsolicited pizza, and switched on the television.

Her therapist gently probed her and she responded the way she knew she should.

Nonetheless, her therapist decided she was depressed and prescribed her an anti-depressant to take on top of whatever other drugs they had her popping.

"We're hoping it won't be necessary for life." Dr. Leland had said. "But many people do take life-long medication and cope just fine."

She didn't bother to ask what they were, or what they were supposed to do, which circuits in her brain they either shorted out or sparked up again. She supposed that they worked.

In the beginning, she had swallowed the anti-depressant like candy. It numbed her right down, her processes chugging to a slow, steady crawl, everything above the bone dulled and blunt, as though her flesh was a cushion encasing her.

These days she didn't take it as often, but she hadn't told her therapist that.

She'd let it slip the day she'd been walking to work. She'd started to wake early, just around sunrise, and there didn't seem to be any other way to fill the extra hours. So she walked to work, the company she worked for being in the Upper East Side.

And she'd seen it – in the next neighbourhood over – the Gymnastics Gym. She couldn't help turning her head to look as she passed by. It was a big beige-brick building, the name: 'Adult Gymnastics Centre' on the side in tall red letters.

She had kept walking.

But that night, when she got home, she had remembered it. And the next day she passed by again.

That time she had walked up to the entrance and collected an information sheet, with opening times and the classes they held.

And then, on the weekend, she'd gone out and bought some workout gear.

She'd thought she might take an Adults Advanced Class, but first she had wanted to see what she could still do. Criminey, it had been a couple of years since she'd done so much as a handstand, after all.

She'd gone, early in the morning, when she figured the place would be not so busy and there'd be less people around to watch her fall flat on her butt.

Inside the gym it had been bright and spacious, decorated all in bright blue and white, clean and stark. There were just a couple of people there, one girl on the bars and another practicing floor work.

The usual stretching and warm-up followed, it all coming back to her like the words of a beloved childhood story, then she'd taken her place on the mats and tried out the basics.

She was surprised at the ease with which she had done her handstands, switching her legs into different positions, from split to stag. Cartwheels followed, then walk-overs, a few side leg lifts, and split leaps. Her eyes fixed on the mirror as she went through the moves, her muscles poised, moving slowly and carefully into each skill, her concentration entirely fixed.

She'd decided to try something more difficult – a back tuck. She'd landed, unexpectedly strong and "stuck". Front handspring followed by a back was similarly successful.

She'd paused, wiped the back of her forehead, stared at her round blue eyes in the mirror and shrugged at her reflection. No way it should all be this easy!

So it was time to really get interesting, and she'd gone to the edge of the mat and prepared herself. A layout into front handspring into a full.

The world had rushed by in a blur of blue and white streaks, she feeling the tug of it on her head and around her legs as they flipped over her body. She'd landed, right foot slipping forward a little, knees bent almost into a crouch, but she'd still landed. She'd paused there a moment, fingertips brushing the mat, blood racing, and felt herself begin to smile.

Red… Ivy… Poison Ivy – she remembered now, Ivy had given her something at some point in their friendship, that had made it all a lot easier. That had made her stronger and more agile. She'd completely forgotten. Unlike Ivy – unlike _Him_ – she didn't have what she was emblazoned on her flesh or etched onto her face. She looked just like an ordinary girl. _He'd_ liked that about her, when it came to sending her places or getting her to do things that required a level of covertness. Just an ordinary, pretty, blonde girl.

_Most of the inmates at Arkham were surprisingly ordinary. The ones in the Minimum Security wing were just your regular, run-of-the-mill crazies, with all the ordinary states of psychosis – depression and bi-polar, border personality disorder and so on and so forth. She hadn't been interested in them._

_The Maximum Security wing, on the other hand – _

_Dr. Bartholomew and Dr. Leland had been reluctant to allow her to begin her internship there, but Dr. Arkham had over ruled them, saying that he admired her ambition and willingness to head straight into the deep end. _

_Dr. Bartholomew had laid an altogether too-familiar hand on her shoulder and said that it wasn't unusual for the interns to request a transfer to Minimum Security after a few weeks, and no one would think the less of her for it._

_She'd shrugged him off and beamed at him, saying how nice his thoughtfulness was. _Patronising, sleazy creep_, she'd thought. _I got plenty of experience handling your sort

_Dr. Leland wasted no time in condescension and to impress upon her just what she was letting herself in for, had taken her on a tour of the Restricted Cells. _

_This was a section that had been built in more recent years, to cope with the increasing flow of costumed freaks the city seemed to attract like a magnet. It had been custom-designed, each cell standing entirely separate from each other, with a wall of six-foot thick concrete between them, the cells themselves set at alternating intervals in two rows. The inmates housed here could therefore not look at each other, or communicate in any way, through the thick panes of glass that fronted each of their cells. There were fifteen cells in all, although only eight were filled. Dr. Arkham had thought it best to have spares._

_The cells themselves were small and bare. These inmates were rarely allowed entertainment, except in the form of television – screens were set into the concrete walls opposite each cell, but the inmates could not control the channels. Occasionally they were allowed reading material, one or two equipment for drawing and painting, but the security measures set up around the providing of these was elaborate and strict. _

_These inmates were all restricted to solitary confinement. They were not permitted to interact in the common room, or indeed, to be removed from their cells for any reason except for therapy. _

_Dr. Leland had recited all of this to her as she'd led her through Arkham's strange, twisting corridors. The place was already giving her the heebie-jeebies, but she was determined to make this work. Determined to show exactly what she could do._

_The two heavily armed guards in front of the armed door nodded to Dr. Leland as she approached, and punched in the code to open the door for them._

_Even though Leland's speech had warned her what to expect, she still hadn't been quite prepared for the sight._

_The long, dimly lit corridor with its strange, dank smell, the stretch of cold concrete broken regularly by shimmering walls of glass, the eerie, hollow silence. The rest of the Asylum was so noisy – not just the sound of inmates, but doctors and nurses, machines and television sets, radios – a symphony of human noise. The dark tunnel that opened up before her was macabre in its quiet._

"_The lights irritate some of the inmates' psychosis," Leland explained, as she stepped into the corridor, gesturing that Harley should follow. "But we always switch them on fully when we interact with the inmates in any way."_

_She'd felt a cold thrill edge its way down her spine, like a fingernail, as she'd stepped after Leland. She couldn't resist looking behind her, just quickly. No one there, of course. The guards had already shut and locked the door behind them._

"_Stay in the middle of the corridor, Dr. Quinzel," Leland advised her. "Do not approach any of the cells."_

Oh my God_, she had thought as they approached the first cell, _I'm about to do what most people in Gotham only have nightmares about. _The thought had her tingling, her breath suddenly feeling a little short._

_Everyone in Gotham – in the world – knew about the lunatic fringe that glutted on the city like a leech. But the fact is, most of the city's inhabitants never encountered any of the psychopaths themselves. Like the rest of the world, most of their experience was with the news stories and coverage that followed an escape or a criminal act, along with its inevitable thwarting by The Batman. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who'd been there when The Mad Hatter or Poison Ivy or whoever had done whatever it had been, but very few people had more direct interaction than that._

_And now, here she was. Harleen Quinzel, the kid whose Guidance Counsellor told her not to bother going to college, because she couldn't focus on her work – the same kid who'd got into one of the top ten universities of the world on a Gymnastics scholarship and had emerged, eight years later, with a Masters in Psychiatry – and now was interning at Arkham Asylum, the world's most notorious loony bin (she was going to have to send a postcard to that Guidance Counsellor soon) – about to look directly at some of the most infamous psychos in history._

_She almost didn't look._

_When they came to the first cell, she'd sucked in a breath and kept on staring straight ahead. It was all too surreal. Was she really here, about to do this? Dr. Leland was gesturing to the cell, saying something, but the world had blanked out for a moment, her vision spotty and a buzzing in her ears. She gave her head a quick shake and turned to face it, finally._

_Stretched out on the small cot, bolted into the floor, was a long, skinny man with an oversized, hooked nose, gaping eyes and a mouth too big for his head. His limbs were gangly and his hair was mousy brown, in a tousled mess falling into his eyes. _

"_Jonathon Crane – more popularly known as The Scarecrow. He's heavily sedated at the moment." Dr. Leland was saying. _

_She'd cocked her head to one side and continued to look, unable to stop now she had begun. The man did nothing but lie there, motionless, in his pale blue Arkham regulation pajamas. Was this really the man behind the strange, frightening, hessian-masked freak who inflicted terror with the aid of a brilliantly devised psychotropic gas? She felt strangely disappointed._

_Of the others, Poison Ivy had been most interesting, curled up in one corner like an Autumn leaf, brown and wrinkled, the vines that tangled from her head of redhair wilting and steadily dropping leaves onto the cell floor. She had stirred just a little as they passed by, lifting an anguished, drawn face to the two Doctors._

"_Isley requires regular sunlight in order to stay in best health," Dr. Leland informed her. "We have a special sunroom created for the purpose – we can't take her outside because she is able to manipulate any form of plantlife. She'll be taken to the sunroom later this afternoon."_

_Only Ivy's eyes had retained their vibrant green colour and they glittered on the two women as they passed by, cold and hard. It had made Harley shiver._

_Dr. Leland had hesitated before the last occupied cell, then said perhaps they'd had enough for the day. But by then all her reticence had retreated. There was nothing so special about any of these kooks, after all. No sweat. She could handle anything._

He'd_ been leaning against the back wall of His cell when they stepped in front of it, masked in the shadows thrown by the dim light. Not doing anything, just standing there, propped against the cement wall, quietly whistling. At first she'd thought _His_ arms were folded, but then she'd realised they were restrained in a straitjacket. She hadn't realised _He_ was so tall, or so lean. _

_Or so… white._

_Of course, she'd seen photos. Everyone had. Even a little video footage. But right there – in front of her – it was staggering, the deathly pallor of that skin, how absolutely perfect it was. The vividness of the green hair. _His_ mouth was not red, though. She realised _He_ must put makeup on, when _He_ was not incarcerated._

_Dr. Leland said nothing, but stood there with her arms folded, frowning at The Joker in _His_ cell._

_Harley said nothing either. There wasn't anything to say, after all._

_Unlike the others – who were creepy, sure, but overall looked just like regular guys, and definitely harmless confined in their cells – this one had an air of menace about _Him_ that was palpable. It sent the air faintly tingling about her, dancing with danger and insanity. She felt herself thrill beneath it, her excitement mounting. __**This**__ is what she'd come here for._

_As if on cue, The Joker had opened _His_ eyes and met hers directly. They were vividly purple, even in the dim light, lit as if from within. She felt herself gripped in that gaze, unable to look away. It felt deadly, being caught like that by no more than a look, but somehow it didn't seem to matter._

_Then _He'd_ smiled. The leer curved up _His_ face, gliding upwards like icing on a cake, slowly splitting to reveal a mouth of bone-white teeth. _

_She'd shuddered, the intensity of the thrill that passed through her unexpected and fierce. She was terrified and intrigued at once, growing giddy with it, her flesh tingling. Beneath her suit blouse her nipples grew peaked and further down, coiling in the pit of her stomach, a strange, molten warmth boiled._

Her form hadn't been perfect of course. But after a month of daily training, complemented with weight lifting and the jogging she began to do, she was back on top in no time. It was definitely a great way to fill up the extra hours, and feeling the strength and power in her body as she flipped and spun and balanced and twisted mid-air was the closest she had got to exhilarating in a long, long while. Bars had always been her favourite, spinning round and round, letting go and flipping over, catching again. Now that was a rush, sending chills ricocheting through her body. It had been her bar routine that had got her the scholarship, of course. Gotham University Gymnastics Team had been thrilled to have her, gold shining in their eyes after seeing her routines, but her own visions of first place medals – and maybe a ticket to the Olympics – had faded in pursuit of her goal for a degree from their world-renowned Psychiatry Department.

Maybe she shoulda stuck to Gymnastics, she sometimes thought glumly in the bathtub or in front of the television.

Then none of this – the rest of it – would've happened. She would never have gone to Arkham, never have met _Him_, never – never fallen. So deep and so fast and so far. And the last ten years would not have happened. Could it really have been ten years? It just – didn't feel like it, and so much of it was blurry and confused. There had been a time, she knew, when the costume was just a costume, a way of embodying the consuming passion she felt and she'd spent as much time out of it as in it. Then there had been another time when she was barely out of it, when it had been almost literally her second skin, when she had felt bare and naked without it.

She didn't even know what had happened to the last one, the one she'd been wearing when she'd last been taken in, it hanging in shreds off her body. There was a storage unit somewhere with spares in it, she knew that much.

They always confiscated them at Arkham.


	4. Chapter 3

**Three**

She'd been going to the Gymnastics Gym for three months when another woman had approached her:

"Wow, you're really somethin'! Been in Gotham long?"

She was cute and strawberry blonde, a smattering of freckles across her nose beneath her spray tan. Amanda had looked at her, momentarily confused. No one had ever spoken to her at the Gym before.

Amanda had lived in Gotham all her life. They had recommended that, on top of changing her identity, she should leave town, but that had been one step too many. Since her public face was best known in costume, her looks didn't present much of an issue. No one recognised her. Gotham was the final link she couldn't break, not that she told them that.

"Born here, raised here, live here and probably'll die here." She'd responded with a smile, stretching. The other woman had giggled.

"That's so bizarre – I would figure someone with your skills would never have slipped past me! Do you compete?"

She'd felt uncomfortable, stretched out on the mat with this perky, inquisitive young woman interrogating her. Once upon a time she would've slapped the girl sidewards and ran off. She knew that, but she felt no inclination to do same.

"I'm actually just comin' outta retirement." She explained quietly, reaching for her toes and the girl had flopped down beside her.

"That's incredible! You should audition!"

She'd quirked an eyebrow and puffed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "For what?"

The girl had laughed, incredulous. "Seriously? You really don't know? Sheesh, girl, you been livin' under a rock?"

Nope, just in a six-by-four concrete cell, she'd thought, then said: "Care to enlighten me?"

The girl had stretched out a hand. "I'm Amy Jacobs." Harley took it and shook it, smiling. Amy's eyebrows had hit her hairline.

"Wow, you really have missed the memo! I'm Captain of the Gotham Knights Cheerleading Squad."

She'd caught on at that. Gotham Knights were the city's top basketball team and their Cheerleading Squad were national champions. The kind of squad any Pom Pom Mom would kill to get her kid on; and every cheerleader had wet dreams about.

She'd got the spot. She retired the receptionist gig and picked up a few waitressing shifts during the week. But most of her time was spent on the cheer squad, learning the routines, choreographing new ones and performing at games, as well as preparing for competitions. It paid okay, and exhausting her body helped her sleep better at night. It didn't take long for her skills to be noticed and soon she was being tossed, using her physical edge to execute astounding twists twenty feet in the air, or particularly impressive sequences in front of the squad. She made sure not to push it too far and get unwarranted attention, but there had been one uneasy moment when a tumbling brunette had gone flying and she'd sprung and caught her easily, saving her from an almost certain bone-breaking fall.

"Take it easy, honey, I don't think they carry collision insurance," she joked, then realised the entire squad was staring at her, slack-jawed.

"Heh." She'd said sheepishly. "I ever mention I bench two-twenty?"

Everyone was nice to her, everyone welcomed her, but somehow she didn't feel like she was really a part of the team.

It didn't make sense. It high school and college she'd never had any problems making friends. She was always one of the** In** crowd, invited to all the parties, regarded with a certain degree of awe and admiration, adored and celebrated. She hadn't had that many really close chums (but then who out of the In crowd ever did, when alliances were so transient…) but she was never lonely or wanting for companionship.

But these people – these pretty, athletic, driven people – her people, at least once upon a time – seemed odd to her now. The things they did, the places they went, what they desired – it all seemed so – alien and nonsensical. Simple pleasures, that made no sense.

She felt displaced and on edge around them, unable to connect with them.

Then again, that wasn't so strange. She felt unable to connect to anyone.

And it she couldn't find allies – someone to connect with, those of like-mind – here – then where was she going to find them?

They picked up on it too, that she was not One of Them. They never stopped being friendly, and never stopped including her in what they did as a team – post-match drinks, picnics at Robinson Park, cruises on the river – but it never got any further than that.

By an unspoken mutual consent they mostly left her alone and she kept mostly to herself.

It was a lonely life, but strangely, she couldn't imagine it being any other way. She might be sane, but she was no longer normal.

Once there was a time where all her life seemed filled by her devotion to another; where she couldn't imagine solitude unless it was being away from _Him_. And even then, it was just a matter of waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

_To have _Him_ so close, _His_ breath on her face and neck, _His_ body pressed up against hers, feeling _Him_ deep inside her; to hear _Him_ chuckle as she whimpered or yelped._

_These were the thoughts that took her through the endless hours spent locked up in Arkham, separated from _Him

_They never allowed her to have access to _Him_ while she was incarcerated of course. No matter how much she screamed and cried and pleaded. It had driven her into hysteria in the beginning, had her ramming up again and again against the glass walls of her cell, shrieking until her voice became nothing more than a hoarse whisper. _

_She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep. She was sick with fever; _He_ was the only cure._

_Being away from _Him_ was like being deprived of oxygen. Everything ached, but not in the sharp, intense and pleasant way of the pain _He_ caused her. Instead it was a dull burning, like her heart had been carved out and her chest was hollow, filled with yearning for _Him_. She told them she would get better if only they would let her be near _Him_. That was all she needed. Couldn't they see it was their separation that was making her crazy? Just let her see _Him_, that's all._

_Instead they sedated and restrained her._

_She was not permitted to have photographs of _Him_ in her cell, not a deck of playing cards, not even one of _His_ faux flowers. Once she had managed to sneak in one of _His_ long neck ties, still with the scent of _Him_ clinging to it, and had wrapped it around her neck and over her knuckles, breathing it in deeply as she drifted into an-almost peaceful sleep. But they had found her out and confiscated it._

_When she'd tearfully asked Dr. Leland why they insisted on inflicting this torture upon her, it was explained that for so long as she was able to fixate on her infatuation, it would hinder her rehabilitation._

_She hadn't remembered what happened after that, except that she woke up back in her cell, in a straitjacket, and for a week she hadn't seen Dr. Leland._

_As the time passed she learned how to bear it better, though the intensity of it never abated. She grew more tolerant of her periods in Arkham, and more functional on the outside when _He_ was not with her. _

I need you to always be ready, Baby Doll. He'd _confided in her. _Be ready for Me.

_Sometimes _He_ was in Arkham, or off doing some sort of secret business of _His_ own. She accepted that – _He_ needed _His_ own space so _He_ would appreciate her all the more when _He_ got back – but she never did quite manage on her own. It helped a lot when she got pally with Poison Ivy. She supposed she just wasn't cut out for solitude. Everything had more meaning when you had someone to share it with. But a best gal pal just wasn't the same as her Puddin'._

_She would lie on her side, arm stretched out to the empty space beside her and feel sick with need and longing. Thoughts of _Him _kept her in control, but being without _Him_ was torture. She would replay in her head, over and over again, _Him_ close to her, _His_ breath hot and wet on her neck and cheeks, _His_ lips cold and _His_ teeth sharp._

What would you do for me, cupcake, He'd _breathe into her ear. _Tell me

Anything, anything_, she'd moan, and _He'd_ laugh._

_It always went on like that, when it happened, which was never as often as she wanted. She would recite all the things she was prepared to do for _Him_, and the more depraved it became and the more personally humiliating to her, the more aroused and eager _He_ got. It became a game, to concoct the most sordid and demented acts and to swear to them for _Him_, learning just how far she herself would be prepared to go – because that was part of the fun and part of the thrill, for both of them. Knowing that, if _He_ asked, she would. _

_Sometimes _He_ did ask._

_And in the height of her passion it had seemed the purest act of love to carry through with it, to feel herself surrendering all for _Him_, to watch _His_ face grow delirious with delight over her compliance, hear _His_ harrowing laughter racket in her ears and know that in seconds _He_ would lay hands upon her and she would be _His_, in body as well as soul._

_She lived for those moments._

_They carried her through the bruises and sprains, the fractures and lacerations. Those were inflicted so carelessly, when _He_ was in the throes of yet another emotional outburst, _His_ violent and uncontrolled mood swings prompting _Him_ to lash out at any who passed too close by. Usually her. But she learned to get pleasure even from those, to view the bruises on her flesh as brands made by _Him_, gently pressing against blue-black patches, like water-colour stains, to feel them sting and remind her._

He_ was not violent during their acts of love. Such a thing would've been too simplistic for _Him_, and too common. No, at those times _He_ needed to clutch and pulsate what was most fragile and vulnerable – her mind, her soul, her heart – there was a delirium to it, knowing how easily _He_ could crush her, how much she opened to _Him_ at those times. She was certain never before had two people expressed their love like this. She achieved satisfaction in knowing she fulfilled _His_; her bliss came from the offering of herself to whichever way _He_ wanted to utilise her._

_So how then could anyone understand how sick it made her to be away from _His_ touch?_

_This love she felt made her feel unreal, detached and floating, skimming the surface of the earth. She was drunk on it and choked with it, a lump that was ever in her throat, a giddiness that knocked off her every step._

_In Arkham she would scream and roll around on the floor, writhing to get away from the torment, pushing her head into the mattress of her bunk, kicking her heels against the cement floor. Outside of Arkham she would roll herself up in _His _clothing, twitching on the bed in a paroxysm of need, moaning and taking in mouthfuls of fabric, gnawing on it; desperate to ease the unending and unsatisfied tide of desire. _

_The relief that would follow then, when they were reunited. To feel _Him_, solid and real beneath her hands and mouth, _His_ smile larger than life and twice as unnatural, purple eyes glittering at her, and the smell of _Him_, always reminding her of that first day she had sat beside _Him_ on the couch at Arkham, transporting her back to that feeling of shyness and awe._

_That feeling. That perfect feeling of curling up beside _Him_, of leaning her head on _His_ shoulder, of being nestled on _His_ knee. It was such a perfect snapshot of contentment, of sheer bliss, sometimes more perfect than that of their lovemaking. Just to be near to _Him

_It was worth any amount of pain._

One of the players had caught her eye. In their height they all reminded her a little of _Him_.

Not that she cared about _Him_ anymore, they just brought _Him_ to mind.

Not that she thought about _Him_ anymore. Much at all.

He was a gentle giant - that was the term they used, wasn't it? Tall and big. Not like _Him_, who'd been tall and lean, if broad in the shoulders. He didn't smile much and when he did, it was shyly, with hesitation. Nothing like _His_ hundred-watt beam _(and how it had lit her up inside…)._

He made a pass at her by complimenting her back handsprings. He didn't know the term for them.

"You know, those, uh, those things you do when you flip backwards and land on your hands, and then your feet follow? You know those things?"

And she'd swung her legs on the bench and smiled. "Heh. Yeah."

"Well, you do them real nicely. Better than any of the others."

"Aw, cut it out. You're makin' me blush!" Though her cheeks remained cold.

"Well I mean it. Matter of fact, ever since you joined the squad I'm feeling a lot more of that team spirit, ya know, when I go out there and play, well, all I'm saying is I feel it a whole lot more knowing you're there cheering me on."

He really had blushed and she thought it was sweet. The coach kept a tight leash on these ones; he was inexperienced. Younger than her, by over a decade, though he didn't know that. They all were, but who could tell?

In High School, in College, it had always been the boys who blushed. She'd liked it. Watching their cheeks redden, their glances flit down to their shoes. It was fun.

With _Him_, it had always been her who'd flushed. _He_ was without shame and without reserve, if _His _chalk-white skin was even capable of reddening against a blood rush. But more than that, _He_ knew and delighted in pushing her buttons. Sometimes all it took was a glance, a smile. It reminded her _He_ was always in control, those blushes.

She started dating the player. They went to all sorts of places. To restaurants and clubs, to cafes and parks, to museums and the movies. He once asked her to the Carnival, but she declined.

_(She did go, though, later by herself, and sat in solitude in the Tunnel of Love, feeling her heart race like the roar of tide in the darkness)_

He was lovely. He was generous. He was big, and tall and beautiful. She liked him.

She really did.

But 'like' - it was such a moderate emotion, after all.

He was a gentleman at first, but after two months had passed by with no further progress to their relationship - not even a hot and heavy makeout session - he asked if she had particularly strict religious values.

She'd had to laugh.

She came to realise that, whilst she enjoyed dating, of having someone to hold her hand and escort her places, to put their arm around her in the middle of a scary movie, to share a late night ice cream cone with and giggle over a silly joke, or swipe a woollen-mitted hand over her cold nose on a frosty night; the thought of intimacy – real intimacy – was something completely outside her realm of longing. It held no repugnance to her, no fear – she was just indifferent. As though a switch had been thrown below the neck and she was simply Off.

Of course, she'd never mentioned that to Dr. Leland.

Not out of any deliberate omission. It just hadn't seemed important.

After the intensity of what she'd experienced with _Him_, how could she be expected to feel otherwise?


	5. Chapter 4

**Four**

Dr. Arkham said she'd been shocked sane.

She had the Sunday off. She sat at the little table in her little kitchen, with a steaming cup of fresh-ground coffee and checked the film sessions. Nothing to do on Sunday. Not even jog. She usually went to a movie, had something light to eat at a café downtown, then strolled back to her apartment via the local library. She hadn't been much into reading before, but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon, lying on her bed and basking in the soft golden sunlight that streamed in through her pink curtains. Read well up until the light faded and she had to switch the bedside lamp on.

She'd splash out on Sundays. Maybe ask the Ciccolina's down below for pizza. Or order in Chinese. Something numbing and stodgy, at any rate. She'd still be in bed early, ready for her jog in the morning.

In _His_more than twenty-year career, The Joker had had many extended leaves of absences. _He_ could disappear for months, or even years. It's just _He'd_ never done that while she was with _Him_. Not without sending her some sort of message or sign that _He_ was still alive and all right and would call on her once _He_ had need of her.

But it had been a year, and nothing. Nothing, nothing at all. While she waited, in her cell at Arkham, and believed and hoped and prayed and waited. Waited and waited and waited.

It was the twilight of Summer, still hot and humid outside. She wore a light white and pink checked dress with a button down front and swing skirt, and a pink, broad-brimmed hat. Heads turned to watch her as she skipped down the street, but behind her dark glasses she didn't notice them.

The local cinema was quiet and the session for the film she went to see, _Enchanted_, almost completely empty. She got a seat by herself, in the middle of a row, a few rows back from the front. Best seat in the house. She had popcorn and a soda and slipped her feet out of her shoes and put them up on the back of the seats in front.

After a while she had stopped watching the news reports and scanning the newspapers, stopped digging through her meal trays for hidden messages. Stopped doing pushups and handstands in her cell. Stopped cracking jokes at the guards as they patrolled passed. Stopped talking.

Finally, one day, she lay down on her bunk and blanked out.

She remained in that state of catatonia for almost three months and when she abruptly sat up again one day, most confused to find herself hooked up to an IV drip and a heart monitor in the Asylum's Infirmary Wing, everything had changed.

Indeed, for a day or two she didn't even remember why she was on the _other_ side of the cell doors.

The movie made her laugh. There was no meanness in it, no bleakness. Everything was bright, technicolour, and explosive with brilliant sound. The people in it were pretty and the costumes they wore dazzling. What fun it would be, to live in a fantasy land like that, where people burst into song for no reason at all, where everything was beautiful, where you hair was always perfect – and where love happened, simply and magically.

She didn't understand why the Princess chose to stay in New York at the end. She got that she loved the lawyer-guy, but why couldn't he have gone back to the fairyland with her?

After that her progress had been rapid. It hadn't been long before she was moved from the Restricted Cells to the main Maximum Security Cells. And from there, it had been a short walk across to Minimum. She was responding well to therapy and to her medication and was showing signs of competency. So what if she seemed a little subdued? The Doctors liked subdued. Subdued meant sane. Her prior state of hyperactivity indicated imbalance. How could they know subdued meant she felt numb and blank inside, like a piece of paper rubbed too bare and thin? She'd had too much practice at smiling.

"_It's difficult to believe – and I don't intend that to be offensive, Harley – but, well." Dr. Leland exchanged incredulous looks with Dr. Bartholomew. "Well, The Joker seems to be responding to his therapy with you."_

_She had sat there, glowing, her hands folded in her lap, keeping her triumph in check. "I'm so pleased to hear that, Joan."_

_Dr. Leland had stood, walking across the room to the window, staring down to the yards where the Minimum Security patients were taking their daily exercise. "It almost defies belief – twenty years The Joker has been here, and nothing. We believed he was entirely incorrigible – completely beyond hope – yet in the last six months you seemed to have worked a miracle. He's becoming more lucid. More willing to engage. He – he even seems to be letting go of his delusion that the world is his creation, all of us pawns in a demented game of his own making. It's – well, it's quite remarkable."_

_She'd smiled graciously, hoping her blush was invisible in the shadowy office. Dr. Bartholomew piped up:_

"_Of course, we don't want to be too precipitous – but, well – if this keeps up, we'd very much like to present a paper or two to a few journals. You see, Harley, the world's best psychiatrists have all tried their hands on the inmates of Arkham, particularly The Joker, only to have to leave, defeated. One or two of them turned to madness themselves. Arkham is a bit of a joke within the medical community. It seems no matter how much progress Joan, myself and the other doctors make, it all gets undone the second the incorrigibles are exposed to excess stimuli. And never mind all the successes we have with the Minimum Security Wing – the only ones the papers ever pay attention to are the failures. It would be an incredible boon to the Asylum to demonstrate some difference in an inmate like The Joker."_

_Dr. Leland tapped her fingers against the window frame and put one hand on her hip. "This would mean big things for you, Harley. Very big things. You should be very proud."_

"_But we don't want to be too precipitous just yet," Dr. Bartholomew hurried on._

"_Oh no. Of course not." Dr. Leland turned back, leant up against the window frame and folded her arms, smiling at Harley. "But it is very exciting nonetheless."_

_It was what she'd dreamed of, coming to Arkham. To gain glory and international renown for the work she did, the name she would make for herself. Sitting there, glowing beneath her two superior's praise, she reflected on the shallowness of that dream. As if any of that mattered anymore! Who cared what some big shot head shrinkers in Germany thought? Who cared about getting her name in the papers, her chapter in the history books? Sheesh. How could she have ever been so small-minded? _

_Still, she had to be thankful. It was that dream, after all, that had led her here, and if she hadn't been here then she never would've met – _Him

_After that it was easy to convince the Doctors that The Joker would continue to improve if _His _conditions changed somewhat, particularly those in session. Sessions always took place with Joker laid down, straitjacketed with feet and shoulders cuffed to the couch. She would sit on one end of the room, near the door, a panic button in her hand, and _He_ would be at the other end. There would be two guards, armed with tranquilliser guns, outside of the room at all times. _

_The Joker still had to be restrained, but now _He_ was allowed to sit up on the couch, pushed closer to her own chair. The first time she had entered the room to see _Him_ sitting up like that, she'd felt her pulse rise. _

_At any time before hand, she could've walked over to _His_ couch and sat down beside _Him_, put her arms around _Him_, stroked His hair. But she'd never dared. How could she?_

_It seemed so wrong, so inhuman to have _Him_ subdued like that, someone as mighty and powerful as _He_ was, someone as strong and compelling. As though _He_ were an animal. To subvert natural order like that – to touch _Him_ when _He_ was not in control – seemed nothing less than abhorrent, a violation. _

_Without the straitjacket she could see the shape of _His_ torso beneath _His_ shirt, long and lean, like the rest of _Him_. It made her heart flutter as she'd taken her chair and opened up her notebook, nodding at the guards to take their leave. They knew this inmate well and threw glaring, suspicious glares at The Joker before leaving the room. _

_She carefully didn't look at _Him_, not wanting to see the shock of green hair that tumbled over _His_ forehead or the grin that made her heart do flip-flops; determined to maintain a sense of professionalism._

"_Now, Mr. Joker, the other day we were discussing – "_

"_Why don't you come sit by me, Harley?" _He'd_ breathed, _His_ voice a soft, silky whisper in the darkness of the room. _

_She hadn't hesitated. She'd stood, walked over to the couch and sat down beside _Him_, trembling violently. God, she'd never been so close to _Him_ before. So close she could smell _Him_, the scent of _His_ hair, slightly damp from _His_ morning shower, the faint and not unpleasant tinge of _His_ natural odour. So close she could see every line that mapped itself around _His_ eyes and down _His_ face, how the white of _His_ skin was porous as her own. So close she felt _His_ immenseness beside her, how if _He_ stood _He_ would tower over her and she would be nothing but a little speck before _Him

_She felt giddy and swayed a little, her shoulder brushing _His_ and even through the fabric of her coat, of _His_ shirt, she felt the jolt that passed between them, like an electrical pulse of pure energy, sizzling and ferocious. _His_ smile had widened._

He_ was so old-fashioned about it, their courtship. _He_ had been determined to woo her completely first, before doing so much as letting _His _lips brush her forehead. A Tease, she'd called _Him_, and _He'd_ laughed._

_When _He_ really had first let _His_ mouth press against her forehead, soft and cool, she had very nearly swooned, lurching forward so that she had to grab hold of _His_ shirt collar to steady herself. _

"_I'm so sorry!" she gasped, horror-stricken at the violation, and entirely unable to let go, feeling the press of _His_ flesh beneath the fabric. _He'd_ looked down at her hands and then back at her, raising an eyebrow._

"_Well, whatever took you so long?" _He'd_ grinned and she felt the sweet giddy flood of relief._

_Their first kiss was like being drugged, growing heady and sick on the sweetest elixir she could imagine. It was more perfect than anything she had believed. _His _lips and tongue were cold and delicious, like an ice lolly on a hot summer's day. _He_ sat there, leaning against the back of the couch, relaxed with _His_ hands folded across His knees, shackled at the wrist, just _His_ head turned toward her. She was too caught up to notice. Her reticence quickly faded the longer the kiss lasted, and she couldn't help but entwine her arms about _His_ neck, pushing her breasts up against _His _chest. _

_Not long after that, she was slipping up beneath _His_ shackled hands so that _He_ could hold her, sitting on _His _knee, her head on _His_ shoulder, listening to _Him_ whisper sweet nothings in her ear. She never could make sense of it all, afterwards. It didn't seem to matter. Nothing at all mattered except the feeling of _His_ body close against hers, of breathing _Him_ in, hearing _Him_ talk. _He_ told her so much, about _Himself_ and The Great Joke, about the world _He_ had created and the grand scheme of it all. To her, _He_ entrusted it, the sorts of things no one had ever heard The Joker tell before. To her, _He_ showed the face the world never saw. _He_ told her about herself, as vividly as if _He'd_ reached into her mind and saw it all there. About always being treated like a silly fool, of needing to prove herself, show the world the mettle she was made of. And wasn't she showing them now? _He_ didn't talk to just anyone, didn't she know? It was just that _He_ really felt she understood _Him _in a way no one else could._

_Out of everyone – dozens of respected, brilliant psychiatrists worldwide – it had been she, little Harleen Quinzel, to get through to _Him_. The fact made her feel drunk with delight. What more evidence of the inevitability of their love could be needed? She never thought she'd find her soulmate in a loony bin, but the facts couldn't be denied. _He_ was the one for her. The only one. The one the songs were written for, the ballads sung – the one who made her life complete._

_She wanted _Him_ so much she felt herself growing mad with it. It itched beneath her skirt like a rash, making her feel hot and flushed, giving her sleepless nights and hours behind her desk staring into space, whiling away the hours until she saw _Him_ again. It made her feel ill. But _He _was such a gentleman about it. She never so much as removed her coat, no matter how madly she wanted to. She felt so respected and treasured. _

_One day when things were growing hot and heavy on the couch, when she'd somehow wound up beneath _HimHis_ knee pressing down on her sternum, _His_ grinning face gleaming faintly in the darkness above her, she thought it might've been about to happen._

"You trust me, cupcake."He'd _whispered and though it wasn't a question she'd nodded, delirious._

He'd_ pressed something into her hand, the panic button she realised, and then brought _His _shackled hands to her neck._

He'd_ pressed only lightly at first, but steadily increased the pressure, _His_ big, bony hands closing around her throat tightly, cutting off her air, crushing her larynx._

_She'd grown light-headed, spots dancing in her eyes, gagged and bucked up against _Him_. Her heart had pounded in her head, and her vision blurred in and out, she struggling to keep sight of _His_ face, the face she found so beautiful, around the darkness that edged the corners of her gaze. She couldn't help the jerk of her body to the choking, but _His _knee was like a lead weight on her chest. _

_She did not press the panic button._

_She trusted _Him

He_ had removed _His_ knee, stretched out on top of her and she'd felt _Him_ hard through _His _trousers, pressing into her hip, and a wave of delirious pleasure had swum through her body, threatening to finally overwhelm her. _

_But then there'd been the rap at the door and the guard: "_Time's up, Dr. Quinzel._"_

_And The Joker had released _His_ hands so that air rushed back into her lungs, making her wheeze, and hauled her up and pushed her back into her chair. _

"Answer them_." _He'd_ growled and she shook her head, sputtered, and fought against the giddiness still blurring her gaze._

"Just a minute_." She'd managed and _He'd _smiled again._

"Good girl."He'd_ purred and she glowed._

Shocked sane.

They hadn't put that in her file, of course. That was slang, that term, _shocked sane_.

She sat at an outdoor café on Miller Harbour, on the Upper East Side, looking out over the water to where the Fashion District stretched, glittering and renewed. She had wandered a little further afield than usual, carried away by a stroll through Robinson Park. It had been the smell of earth, damp after a Summer shower, and the sharp scent of leaves, the hum of crickets a gentle lullaby beneath the trees. It brought Ivy to mind.

Where was Ivy now? Locked up in Arkham, probably, wilting away in her cell. Funny to think of how close they'd been, when they were so different. Ivy didn't like men, though she never hesitated to use them. She was happy to let them think she liked them, when it suited her. Ivy had never approved of _Him_, of course.

Not that, before their friendship, Ivy had ever had much interaction with _Him_. Alliances between the Rogues Gallery were few and usually unreliable. But still, Ivy had taken it on. She'd wanted Harley to stand up for herself, break her ties with _Him_, go solo. Ivy never really understood there was no point to going solo, for her. The only times she ever went solo wasn't on purpose. It was because trouble came to find her and she had to find a way out of it.

Still, it was nice to think Poison Ivy, dedicated misanthrope, had a soft spot for her. Her best pal. She'd never had a friend as close as Ivy had been. Not that it mattered much in the end – plants still came first for her. And she'd crashed – ruined – what Harley finally thought would be –

There was a bitter sweetness to remembering Ivy. She'd left the park and kept on walking, to shake that strange, humid cloak of memory off of her, swapping the smell of flowers and the sound of crickets for exhaust fumes and the beep and blare of traffic.

Then the salty tang and cool breeze of the sea.

It was surreal to think of it, those strange, undone years even as jumbled and confused as they were. Had she really been there and done those things – had that truly been her life?

But she'd been crazy then. Certifiably insane. Requiring medication to keep her under control. Medication and restraint. She'd been considered highly dangerous. Worthy of a spot in the Restricted Cells. An 'incorrigible'. Unpredictable. Off the wall. Lethal.

And why? What had it all been for, in the end?

There was a rush to it, that much was true. A thrill like no other to live so large and so wild, to make such a splash and to see people cower at the sight of her.

With her lunch she had a glass of white wine, a Verdelho. She usually didn't drink, it didn't really agree with her (and certainly not with her medication) but if there was any day to do it, Sunday was it. Besides, it suited the atmosphere, sitting at the white-clothed table, a few guys in monkey suits sawing away at their fiddles in the corner, the sun bright overhead and the water a glittering blue. She was glad of her hat, though it was past noon.

Did she miss it, the attention? The notoriety, the fame?

No one ever recognised her. When she wore a costume as distinctive as the jester's cowl, her real face was inevitably lost. _(But then, which had been her real face, after all?_) She was Amanda Hart, a nobody. One more pretty blonde face in a row of high-kicking, chanting cheerleaders. One more wise-crackin', gum-popping waitress taking orders.

One more solitary person rolling over in bed at night.

She'd walked far enough to justify getting the Monorail home. But she had a little buzz after the wine, and she didn't like it. That chemical, artificial buzz – so unlike – a natural one. (_But they said it wasn't natural, it was a chemical imbalance in her brain_…) So she opted to walk back again, this time avoiding Robinson Park. It would take longer, but it would work off lunch and the pizza to come. Why not?

But, as much fun as it had been to collect a scrapbook of front-page appearances, the real reason she'd done it had been for _Him_. Because it was the only way she could truly be beside _Him_. Because it delighted _Him_ to see her that way. Because it just made sense at the time. What better way to show her love than to assimilate her life into _His_?

Crazy, to believe _He'd_ ever loved her. (_But _He_ had, not in any normal way just in _His_ way…) _ Ii didn't matter even if that were true. She was crazy to have loved _Him_.

She didn't anymore.


	6. Chapter 5

**Five**

The waitressing gig had quickly grown old. She'd enrolled in beauty school and took as many theatre make-up classes as she could. She had over a year of the Wayne pension left, why not make the best of it?

She was good at the theatre make-up, a natural, her teacher praised her. She had felt a warm, glowing pride at that.

It wasn't that she didn't think she could handle Med School. It was just that there were so many other important things to do – keg parties and mixers, cheerleading practice and the Gymnastics squad, socials and parties, parties, parties. Inevitably, her grades fell behind. And she'd resorted to – other – tactics to get her the 4.0 and raving recommendations that had Arkham slavering to take her on as an intern.

_(I know, cupcake, Daddy always knows. It wasn't that you couldn't focus. You deliberately didn't try, in case you really did fail. You don't need to tell Me. I see it all. Pumpkin Pie.)_

So it felt good, really good, to see how naturally she did excel at some things. Gymnastics (even before Ivy's brew, she was a natural) and art, here applied to makeup. She got the best marks in the class, and they were all her own.

On late Friday and Saturday nights, she got a gig applying make-up on Drag Queens down at the Ruby Slipper Cabaret. These Queens were the crème of the crop – every Ladyboy knew how to do her own makeup, of course, but it was a serious status symbol if you could afford a girl to do it for you.

They adored her there. She blended perfect rainbow arcs of colour for their eyelids, complimented with three inch long, rhinestone encrusted eyelashes, magnificently arched eyebrows that resembled brush strokes on a Japanese painting, and lips, ruby-like and glittering beneath the spotlights with the glitter she patted onto the colour. She brought out each Queen's best features, making each one unique and distinguishable under the spinning white spots of the mirrorball. They called her Mandy and squealed over how 'camp' she was, in her tight pink button-down dress with the matching bolero. "Your name's Amanda Hart and you're a cheerleader! That's too perfectly camp, darling!" Camp? She'd never seen herself as camp before, but she liked to be well presented. Always. And as make-up artist at the top Drag Club in the whole town, she had to look the part.

Camp inspired her. It became a performance of her own to dress for the job, teasing her hair into a wonderful laquered platinum blonde bouffant, fixing it with pink rhinestoned clips, shimmying into a leopard print wiggle dress with a pink marabou shrug over the top, impossibly high stilettos, the heels patterned with leopard to match the dress. False eyelashes, with just a speckle of glitter over their fronds. Maybe just the slightest exaggeration of her accent.

Playing dress-ups had always been so fun.

Champagne flowed like water backstage at Ruby Slipper. She would sometimes have a glass or two, but it went straight to her head.

Of course, the Drag Scene wasn't like it used to be, back in the day. These days it was positively fashionable to be seen at one of the big clubs. The gay contingent still outnumbered the straighty-one-eighties, of course, but Ruby Slipper knew they bought just as many drinks. So they added an incentive to the lads in the form of 'real' girls, getting down in a cage or on a pole before and after the Drag show sets. The club didn't have a licence for stripping, but a g-string and a bra could be even more titillating and given that most of the girls worked at stripclubs when they weren't at the Slipper, they could nod a bit of a business that way as well, which suited them.

She watched the poledancers with their astounding athleticism and grace and wondered.

One night (morning) after close, when the Dancers and the Queens were carrying on with their own party, when they'd not only induced her to stay but had managed to force several glasses of strawberry champagne down her throat, they'd egged her on until she had got up on the podium, giggling so hard she thought she'd rupture something.

Tight skirts did not for easy poledancing make, so to the chants and cheers of her audience of strippers and cross-dressers, she'd wiggled out of her dress and in her underwear made a clumsy spin on the brass pole. It was fixed into the ground and was harder than she thought. It was strength that carried her around, rather than the momentum of the pole spinning. One of the girls got up to show her a few tricks and the whistles had turned into gasps of awe as she mastered them almost instantaneously. After a lifetime of gymnastics and an upper fused to her genetic material, courtesy of a woman who controlled plantlife, she wasn't so surprised.

The Queens decided it. She was becoming one of the performers. "What are we gonna call you?" they shrieked, "You need a cool stripper name!"

She resisted at first, but they entreated and begged and mentioned the size of the tips and the adoration of the crowd. And a few nights later she made her debut as Candy Heart, in pink sequins and beads assembled for her by her loyal Queens.

She'd always worked barefoot, or in slippers. Six-inch stilettos made her nervous, even balanced as they were by the platform toe, and the roaring crowd made her more nervous still. Stepping out onto the podium via the catwalk that led from the stage proper, a swirl of faces smiling and cheering below her, she felt a touch of vertigo hit her. They seemed so far away… miles below her… and it had been so long since she'd seen a crowd of smiling faces like that – not chemically induced, here, but entirely voluntary.

_Barbie Girl_ by Aqua started up over the speakers, the bare-chested, frosted-tipped DJ grinning cheekily in his booth. The crowd laughed and clapped, seeing the joke. The heck with it, she thought and began to dance, spin, climb and flip.

It was different to cheerleading, where she formed part of a cohesive team. Here, all eyes were on her, and her alone.

And she was a hit.

_She felt at home at Arkham. There was something almost soothing about being strapped to a bench and wheeled through those corridors, being deposited back into her old cell and administered a sedative, tucked into her bunk. To shut her eyes and feel consciousness slip away from her._

_Sometimes it all felt too much, on the outside. She didn't think she'd always felt like this, but sometimes it happened that it was as though all the circuits in her brain had fizzed out and she was running around unwired and unplugged. Like she'd been charged up too long and set loose but there was nothing there to focus her volt on so it was sparking out all over the place. Yes, it all got just a little bit too much. _

_Sometimes she'd even deliberately let herself be recaptured. She valued her independence, but after a few months it got to feeling like she was a kid at a birthday party who'd had too much red fizz and Arkham was her bedroom, where she was tucked in to calm down. _

_Lying there, in her bunk, staring upwards at the blank white ceiling and listening to the faint hum of the security systems, Professor Crane's ravings, the rustling of Ivy's leaves or the ping of Two-Face's coin as he flicked it up and down, she felt like she was home again._

_And those times when she could hear, just faintly, the soft melodic whistle in the cell furthest from her own – she would grow giddy with joy, learning how to block out all other sounds so that she could focus wholly on that one, letting her eyes glaze over and her mouth loll open, relaxing entirely into the soft foam mattress which cradled her and which, if she let herself slip halfway out of consciousness, she could believe was _His_ body curved around her own, _His_ whistle close by in her ear._

_Their corridor was always kept dark. She didn't mind; the bright fluorescent globes in the other parts of the Asylum did bother her somewhat, and it helped sharpen her vision, the same way her senses of hearing and smell heightened whilst she was locked up. It was always dark and always cool and she was fed three times a day and kept pumped full of sedatives which generally helped her feel the circuits in her brain were rewiring themselves, patiently waiting to blow themselves loose again, when the time was right. _

_When she looked out of her cell, she could see only the cement wall in front of her, a television set into it at eyelevel. If she pressed her face up against the glass and looked to either side, she could just make out the sheen of the glass walls of the other cells, see the corridor fade to black somewhere in the corner of her eye, knowing beyond it were the impossible twisting turns and creepy corners of the madhouse. She seemed to recall they had once intimidated her, but that was ridiculous. It must've been someone else she was thinking of, perhaps one of her doctors. Now Arkham seemed like a haven, a safe place to hide and to sleep and to wait, the ghosts it housed rustling above her head in a soothing lullaby._

_Dr. Leland would tell her she'd had several robbery and assault charges made against her since the last time, and she was always confused. _

"_I'm just there for Mistah J," she explained, "It's all I want to do. I'm a family gal, Joanie. I just want to settle down and take care of my Puddin'. But since _He_ likes to pull a grand scheme or two, well I'm onboard to help _Him_ out. That's all."_

_Later she had overheard Dr. Leland talking to Dr. Bartholomew: "She seems to be developing The Joker's grandiosity complex – the belief that the common rules of society do not apply to her. When she commits an act of theft, for example, she has little awareness she is breaking the law. She sees what she wants and she takes it and sometimes people get hurt in the process. She's not getting better. In fact, she's continuing to degenerate."_

_Then she'd had a new pill introduced into her little cup of multi-coloured candy. _

_The walls of Arkham blurred and ran together. She never knew how long she spent there, what day it was, what year. They rolled into one, like a ball of used chewing gum, squished together, colourless and dry. She remembered one night, waking with her head buzzing, feeling as though this stark, midnight blue world was her dream and the dream she'd just had of falling through fireworks was reality. There was an unusual chill to the air, of something hovering in the darkness and waiting. Not knowing why, but looking up suddenly out of her cell door to see The Joker standing there, feet bare and straitjacketed, leering at her through the glass, _His_ pale flesh gleaming dully in the darkness. How, even as she'd watched, round-eyed and silent, _He'd_ calmly dislocated _His _shoulders, the grin never abating, and wiggled out of the straitjacket before jamming _His_ arms neatly back into their sockets. She felt the damp between her legs and she wasn't sure if she was aroused or had pissed herself. _He'd_ motioned for her to be silent, one finger help up to _His _silently giggling mouth and had disappeared from view. _

_She'd waited, curled up in the darkness on her bunk, her heart thunderous in her ears, terrified, though not sure entirely of what. She never knew what _He_ did, or how, but a moment later the iron door set into the wall beside the glass of her cell clicked, disarmed, then swung slowly open. _

He_ was waiting for her in the doorway; a tall, thin spectre, teeth bared and skin cold. _

_Both the guards were dead. _

He_ led her through Arkham's strange gothic corridors with confidence and speed, never saying a word. So she kept quiet too, and in silence the two of them sped through the dense black catacombs of the Asylum, one of her hands enclosed tightly within _His_, heading deeper and deeper below ground and entering into ancient, unused sections of the monstrous building, parts she hadn't even known had existed._

_Finally they had emerged, the night air crisp and chill on the skin beneath her thin cotton pajamas, shocking in its very freshness. She'd forgotten how it felt, what open air smelt and tasted like, the feel of grass and rocks beneath her feet, the vastness of open space and the sight of stars twinkling above them in the sky, absolutely endless in its height._

_Her first Arkham breakout._

_She'd been laughing the first time they brought her in, ribs aching, stomach muscles cramping, in hysterics. The Batman had brutalised The Joker before her very eyes and she had jerked and felt herself blur out in response, her sight shattering into a thousand shards of indecipherable colour, the world torn to ribbons upon it and oozing through her mind in a nonsensical pattern as she had moved to stop, to finish, to destroy._

_Even in a psychotic rage, she was no match for The Bat and later she'd sat upon a witness stand, heavily sedated and restrained, teeth chattering as Dr. Arkham testified to her absolute inability to stand trial. _

_Through her giggles she entreated them to let her see _Him_, to know that _He_ was okay, that she would die, die, die if they didn't tell her, that she would laugh to death at the absolute awfulness of it. _

_Hands upon her, big rough hands, like slabs of meat, lifting her up as she struggled, fought against the straitjacket and the numbness of the drug wearing off, laying her down on a trolley and strapping her down. Kicking up with her feet and catching one of them on the jaw, laughing at him and laughing at the agony as he wrenched her foot back and bound it tightly down. Of something smooth and wooden being pushed into her mouth, between her teeth, strapped over her head, of her head being strapped down as well, of being absolutely immobile and quivering with tension against her bonds as they'd wheeled her up the front ramp and into the Asylum. The sight of Arkham's peaked ceiling above her head as they wheeled her through the front hall and into the corridors that lead to the Maximum Security wing. She'd never seen Arkham from this perspective before, towering above her, its ceilings vanishing into thick, flapping shadows, racing away into forever. _

_She saw them hiding there, the ghosts that haunted the Asylum, stroking their long fingernails together, their teeth glittering as they peered down at her, welcoming her. She tried to speak around the brace, to tell Dr. Bartholomew they were there and waiting for her, but could make only a series of guttural grunts. _

_The Asylum raced past in a flash of bone white tiles and dark ceilings, the thick necks and brute faces of the guards and Dr. Bartholomew, the hairs of his nostrils stark black against his skin as he hovered above her. She knew they were flying now, moving from the Asylum into a long, blank, dark space of nothing; in this nothing they intended to leave her._

_When they stopped, the ceiling was lowering, closing in on her, bringing the ghosts closer and she'd wiggled again, burst upwards with such sudden strength one of the straps around her ankles snapped and a guard pounced on her foot, suffocating it back down into the trolley mattress. _

_The dim light reflecting of the point of a syringe as Dr. Bartholomew readied it and she tried to spit the brace out, to tell him that he couldn't leave her defenceless with the ghosts, but then a guard had her head in his hands, forcing her motionless, and there was a prick in her neck and the astonishingly rapid loss of will, of motivation, of energy. _

_She stilled, limbs settling, letting out a long hiss of breath. One by one the straps were untied, and she felt herself float upwards, towards the ceiling where they waited with clammy breath. She watched them approach with strange calm. But then she was caught and gently pulled back downwards, set on her cot where they tied her ankles down, so that she wouldn't drift off again. _

"_Leave the brace in," Dr. Bartholomew's voice drifted on the still air, "she could still bite her tongue."_

_The straitjacket now felt like a comforting hug, wrapped around her smooth and tightly, keeping her safe and still as all the colour of the world slowly and softly retreated, fading out as silence rose humming around her. Right before she shut her eyes she saw the ghosts twirl, entwine and descend, towards her._

Sometimes, beneath the hazy lights of the club, with the hands of the crowd pumping up around her ankles, jamming bills into the straps of her shoes, she thought she caught sight of those ghosts. The thought that they had followed her…

But that was impossible. They were bound to the Asylum.

The hourly rate was okay, and the tips were great. She spent most of it on costumes, lavished with fringing and sparkly trim, impossibly high heels and rhinestones for her eyes. She went into costume shops as well as the regular lingerie and dance gear joints. You never knew what you could find on a rack for a fraction of the price.

_(Once, in an adult shop, choosing from a rack of sparkly thongs, she'd caught sight of a cover in the 'Fantasy' DVD section, and had approached it with a numbness around her mouth and head. It was her and Ivy, embracing, kissing, lurid and half-naked, her cowl still on and Ivy's green breasts a lot larger than she ever remembered them – of course, it was not her and Ivy at all, but porn actresses in a budget flick and she'd dropped the thongs on the floor and made a quick getaway, her stomach tipping, as though somebody might recognise her.)_

Like cheerleading, it was a rush. So different from the blank rhythm of an ordinary day. On the pole she felt something inside her come alive again, something tickle the back of her sternum, light and teasing, inviting.

Amongst the misfits of Drag Queens and strippers, she felt herself begin almost to thaw, to start to find her place in the puzzle. They were all too busy with their ordinary lives to do anything but come together twice a week at the Slipper for a few hours, but when they did there was a camaraderie she had not felt – in such a long time.

One night, one of the Queens came in, calling out to her over the chaos of feather boas and sequinned thongs, the smell of sweat, makeup and nicotine that clouded the close air of the dressing room. A row of Drag Queens and Dancers sat in states of undress in front of the lighted mirrors. She still did the makeup before the shows; they depended on her.

She fought her way over cushioned stools and beaded frocks to get to where Mitzi gestured frantically to her.

"I've got the best show on tonight and I need you to do a specific face for me, can ya do it honey?"

"Ya need to ask?"

And Mitzi laughed and chugged back a glass of champagne.

"It's to '_Tears of a Clown'_, ya know that song?" she was struggling with her costume, a purple and green sequinned monstrosity, a green beehive wig lying on the dressing table in wait. "Look, here's a photo of what I want,"

She'd jammed her hand into her zebra-print clutch and withdrawn a crumpled piece of paper, obviously a print-out from an internet website. Harley had taken it and when she saw who the photo was of, she'd sat down abruptly on the floor.

_Him._

Collapses in the dressing room were common; the heat, booze and pot made for a heady mixture. No one took any notice.

"Mitzi, ya don't think that's in a little bad taste?" Portia called out from across the room.

"Get off my falsies, the kook hasn't been seen for almost three years! Anyway, you know me, " Mitzi had heaved as she pulled her girdle up, vital for creating the nipped in waist to perfect illusion. "I don't care what sorta reaction I get, so long as I get one! C'mon, Mandy, honey, do a line if it'll help, but we gotta get goin', I'm on in the first set."

Head still spinning, she'd gripped the back of a chair and numbly pulled herself to her feet, staring at the photo.

"What do ya think happened to him, anyhow?" Midori, one of the dancers, queried the room as she fixed her hairpiece in place.

"Dead. Bottom of Gotham River. Batman finally snapped. Let's hope." Portia returned.

"Nah. I reckon he's holed up somewhere, biding his time. And when he comes back, it'll be worse than anything we've seen before." Amber was always a pessimist.

"Forget it. He's dead. Gone. And good riddance too. How many people did he kill anyhow?" It was Portia again, fiddling with her false breasts in their black lace bra.

"Almost… three thousand…" She heard herself say quietly, and several heads turned to look at her.

"That many! Holy … Mitz, you sure you wanna do this show?" Amber cocked an eyebrow, waving her cigarette around.

"Sure. It'll be a real laugh."

Mitzi never asked for the photo back so Harley never gave it back. Instead she folded it up tightly and tucked it inside her panties. She didn't want anyone to find it in her purse, or in her pocket. Not that she was sure how anyone would, but she didn't like the thought anyway.

Somehow, she made it through her shift, feeling as though she were a ball of pins and needles, prickling their way through the hours, and found herself home in her apartment.

She'd gone into her wardrobe, with a small hot pink penlight, sat in one corner behind the rows of dresses and skirts, pulled the photo out and unfolded it. It was a mug-shot, in full colour. She felt her heart squeezing in on itself, twisting and turning, like a sponge being wrenched dry.

She'd been crazy when she loved _Him_. Which she didn't anymore. Now that she was sane.

She couldn't help but think of _Him_ now and then, of course. After all, it had been ten years. Ten years when she couldn't think of anything but _Him_.

Even as clouded and confused as the sequence of events were now, over those ten years, what exactly had passed through her head and then out through her actions a jumble sale of half-formed, technicolour recollections, she still remembered _Him_ with frightening clarity.

The bone-chilling laugh, the grin, the tall, towering height of _Him_ and the surprising strength in His chalk-white hands. The smell of _Him_, and how it had made her giddy. The touch of _Him_, alternatively tender and brutal, and sometimes both at once and how even agony was precious, when _He_ inflicted it. The unbelievable patterns of twisted scar tissue on _His_ bare flesh, a testimony to the years _He'd_ duked it out with The Bat, the wiry muscle on _His _skinny frame. The long, lean face and aquiline nose, the intense, mesmerising purple glare. Soft, wiry green hair curling over her fingers.

Of course she had put _Him_ behind her now. Otherwise she would never have been declared sane and competent enough for release. That was the whole point.

And she had always been careful, very, very careful. Never to look at photos of _Him_, or recordings, or read any true-crime books about _Him_, or come into contact with anything that directly referred to, or depicted _Him_, in any way, any way at all.

Not that it was difficult. After all, _He_ was gone, it truly would seem, for good.


	7. Chapter 6

**Six**

In the beginning she had practiced writing her new name for hours:

_Amanda Hart. Amanda Hart. Amanda Hart._

How should the 'A' look? The 'H'? Should she finish off with a scroll below the scrawl, a heart _(as diamonds had been Harley Quinn's motif, so hearts were Amanda Hart's. Might as well stick to the deck.)_

Mandy Hart, maybe. The 'M' had more decorative possibilities.

When she had finally hit upon a style she liked, a giant 'A' followed by tiny, curling letters, the even bigger 'H' looping back over the final 'nda', the 'art' just below them, she practiced until she was perfect at it. She used to draw a little jester's head over the 'i' in 'Quinn', but there was no 'i' in her new name, so she did add a little heart at the end.

It was too flamboyant a signature for deposit slips, credit card receipts and official documents. She had to shrink it down. But spectators at the basketball matches often asked for her autograph and it looked great then.

She had got a few requests at Arkham, for autographs. All of her mail was opened and checked, for coded messages or smuggled escape aids. All her outgoing mail was similarly scrutinised. The only thing they had accepted her sending was her signature, scrawled on a piece of paper they provided.

That was until the Doctors decided it was implying approval of her psychosis and forbidden.

_He_ had only been allowed to do that once, she'd read in _His_ file, another lifetime ago. Even though they'd given _Him _nothing more than a ballpoint pen, _He_ had managed to use it to puncture the throat of _His_ guard and escape. That was in the days when _He_ only had one guard, when they had thought a pair of hand and ankle cuffs was sufficient restraint. _He'd_ picked them open, with the same pen.

They wouldn't give her a razor to shave with, although the more years that looped over each other, the less that seemed to matter.

"Mister J. doesn't wanna make ha-ha with a yeti!" she'd told Dr. Leland in the beginning, but they wouldn't risk it. _He'd_ been permitted to shave once, as well. Another thing she'd read. They'd given _Him_ an electric razor, thinking it was the safer option. The guard then had only turned his back for a minute, but it was all _He'd _needed to open the thing up and remove the blades, opening yet another throat (and pausing just long enough to extend the corners of his mouth upwards into a bloody smile). After that, none of the Maximum Security inmates were permitted razors for any reason.

_He'd_ never been hairy though, so it hadn't mattered much to _Him_. Still, it had fascinated her, the faint buzz of green stubble over _His_ jaw, when she'd sat by _His_ side in session. She'd wondered if all _His_ body hair had been green.

She sat in her closet, and fingered the photograph and blushed to remember discovering that it was.

Blushing. Not a good sign.

She knew she should throw the photograph away. Tear it up and burn the scraps, even. She knew. Knew it was the right thing to do. But she just couldn't bring herself to manage it.

Almost three years now, without seeing _Him_, even in a photograph. She was over _Him_. She'd been crazy then, and she wasn't anymore.

She slept with it under her pillow.

It did no harm, surely. It was there – just to – to remind her. What she had lost. What she could lose again.

But if _He_ really was – gone – then surely – she had nothing to lose? There was no danger, not anymore. So it could stay, there, under her pillow. She could look at it in the closet, once a day. Sometimes twice.

Did it matter if she kept it in her panties during the day? After all, she didn't want anyone finding it and getting the wrong idea. Who'd believe her, with her record? It was just a reminder.

The first month after her release there had been a rustle at her window, and heart racing she'd crouched behind the kitchen bench for a few blood-pounding moments. Finally, she'd worked up the chutzpah to go over to it, where her curtains fluttered in the night breeze.

She'd drawn in a big breath before leaning out.

There was nothing out there, of course.

She'd huffed out in relief, and laughed a little at herself. On a whim, she'd look upwards, towards the sky, where a half-moon dully gleamed in the indigo night.

Then she'd seen it.

The heavy black cape, swirling, that familiar, terrifying shape moving over the rooftop.

She'd dropped back inside, falling to the floor at the window, trembling violently in terror.

For the next four months she found evidence **he** was watching her. Nothing overt, just little indications. She knew **he** was too good, too clever and too cunning for it to be anything other than deliberate. **He** wanted her to know **he** was watching.

She was glad for the sleep medication, or she would never have gotten a wink, those early days.

But after a while, it stopped. Of course, that didn't mean **he** wasn't still hanging about. Just that **he** figured she didn't need to know anymore. That she could be – trusted.

So yes. It wouldn't do for the photo to be found. She was free, now, and she wanted to stay that way. She'd built a life for herself. A life free of _Him_ and **him** and Ivy and of madness and Arkham Asylum, of straitjackets and tranquilisers, of beatings and humiliating acts, of strange sex that hurt even though it wasn't violent and that was blissful although she was only ever the vessel, of people dying with smiles on their faces and of robbery she couldn't remember, of being sick, absolutely sick with love, choking on love and growing nauseous on it, dizzy and crazed. Free of a smile that could rupture her heart and a touch that could consume her soul.

_A Gotham, wracked by an earthquake, cut off from the rest of the country, left to tear itself apart._

_They'd danced together, by the docks, _He_ sweeping her into the waltz when she hadn't been expecting it, letting her neck fall back and watching Gotham's dusky red and blue skies whirl above her while _He_ spoke of _His_ plans for getting the most out of the city. _

_Carrying her, unexpectedly strong, to the top of the clock tower so that they could look out upon the city and the greatness _He_ wrought._

_Holding her close against _Him_, she curled up on _His_ lap, _His_ arms encircling her, squeezing her tight while _He_ told her of _His_ scheme to bring smiles to the faces of unsuspecting tourists at Gotham Harbour. _

_But there was more than that._ He'd_ pat her bottom, pinch her cheek, chuck her chin, tug her ponytails, stroke her head and trip her up, laughing as she collapsed in a heap, all elbows and knees, before whirling her up once more and squeezing her tight. Not to mention the times _He_ would embrace her, whirl her around in _His_ arms, patter kisses all over her…_

"_Harley, it's been well observed The Joker has frequently displayed… certain types of physical affection towards you." Dr. Leland interrupted her, cool and crisp, swiftly making notes on her pad. "I am more interested in hearing you explain how this reflects a reciprocation of your romantic feelings, rather than the paternalistic gestures made towards a pet. I would say an indulged pet, but since The Joker has also been well observed to beat you senseless and at times make attempts on your life, I'm not sure that would be accurate."_

_Dr. Leland's objectivity in treating Harley had been questioned, but not with much interest. Who else could do it?_

"_You just don't get it, do you?" she was in a straitjacket although she could've told them there was no need, the sedatives had taken hold and it was all she could do to hold her head up. Her arms, wrapped in the confining canvas, felt weighted down with lead._

_Sure, _He_ tried to kill her more than once. And more than once afterwards _He'd_ held her close, up against _Him_, sometimes months after the fact and whisper to her that it was all right, didn't she understand? _He_ was in control of all things. It was just a joke, after all, and _He_ could bring her back anytime that _He_ wanted. Just like _He_ always did. _

_After awhile, it began to make a sort of sense. Maybe she wasn't real. Maybe _He_ really had imagined her for _His _own amusement. _

_She didn't mind, after all. She loved _Him_. She was happy to be a creation of _His_ mind if it made _Him_ happy._

_It was like _His_ schemes to take down The Batman. None of them were ever really intended to finish The Bat off once and for all. _He_ kept the pretence up, but the truth was _He_ simply wanted the engagement, the enjoyment of it all. _He _liked hurting Batman, shredding his world into scraps of bleeding confetti, but there was absolutely no way _He_ wanted a world without The Batman. The very thought was enough to have _Him_ raging, twisting and contorting into the strange Joker-Monster that emerged sometimes, a whirlwind of psychotic fury she cowered from. _

_She'd made that mistake only once. _

_It was okay to hurt The Bat. It was okay to kill the ones The Bat held dear. But, always, The Bat must live._

Just a jokeHe_ whispered to her, the time they'd been reunited once she'd recovered from her injuries, sustained after _He'd_ pushed her out a window. _Is Daddy's punkin feeling all better?

_So she stopped taking it so seriously._

"_Harley, I am interested in why you believe that anyone who attempts to kill you does it as a joke – or that they love you, regardless?"_

_She'd giggled, tapping her head back against the cushioned leather of the sofa, a bubble of spit forming in the corner of one mouth. _

"_If only you could see – just how much _He_ really does love me," she whispered in a sing-song voice. "It's still the same – I'm the only one who understands _Him_. Really understands _Him_. That's why _He_ loves me."_

He_ needed her. No one believed her, but she knew it was true._

_They didn't understand, did they? Just how easy it would've been to get rid of her. A bullet to the head, a big dose of toxin, a couple of bricks tied to her foot and dropped into Gotham River. But there always had to be something splashy about it, something over the top. If she was just the pawn they told her she was, _He_ would never have bothered. _He_ never went to any effort over _His_ henchmen, after all. _

_And none of them had ever survived as long as she had._

He_ eliminated them without a moment's thought or hesitation, as _He_ did anyone who crossed _His_ path. But for her – _He_ went to some trouble._

He_ really did need her._

_Although it had come at a time she'd been spiralling into the Gotham skyline, trapped in a rocket intended to hurtle toward her doom, she still treasured the confession _He'd_ made to her then. Nursed it in her heart like it was a puppy, feeding it on her blood and marrow, that recollection. That _He_ was killing her because _He_ had begun to care for her, that _He_ found such feelings confusing and upsetting. That therefore she had to be disposed of._

_It was romantic, in its way. No, in _His_ way. _His_ very special, unique way._

_It was rarely seen by the world outside, the times that _He_ petted and indulged her, stroked her hair and called her baby, but they were the moments of sweetness that made all the pain bearable. _

_And there was plenty of pain. _He_ liked inflicting pain and after awhile, she learned to like it and to feel the love in the pain _He_ gave her. _

You always hurt the ones you love, Harley, He_ would laugh. _And I love to hurt you best of all.

_She understood, of course._

_No matter what anyone said, she really had got through to _Him_. Maybe not really, back in Arkham. But afterwards, at some time, somehow, something had clicked and changed in _His_ head, the psychotic brain that had so long stood alone in the world, perfectly content in its solitude. _

_And when it had changed, _He_ had grown uncomfortable with it._

_Dr. Leland had tapped her pen against her chin, frowning thoughtfully. _

"_Only you and The Joker can ever know what goes on between the two of you," she conceded, "but my difficulty here is that neither of you are renowned for giving reliable testimonies."_

_She'd blinked, stretched her neck backwards to look at Leland. "Why would I lie?" she whispered, her voice hoarse._

_Dr. Leland's face had creased with a rare look of sympathy. "Because you need to believe it." She answered quietly, but Harley had only laughed. A long, loud peal of it._

_How could Dr. Leland know? After all, _He_ had told her so _Himself

_In the beginning, it had been like a fun pantomime, to call her 'my chick', or 'my dame'; it was a bit of a joke – The Joker with a girlfriend! The most dangerous, bizarre lunatic the world had ever seen, with a lady to call _His_ own. But time moved on and it began to have meaning. And when it began to have meaning, it meant _He_ had to question what _He_ knew to be true – that _He_ was in control of the world and all things in it._

He_ didn't like that. _

_So _He_ objected, and she understood. She showed _Him_, through her unending, patient love, that she understood. And after awhile, _He_ reasoned, it was perfectly possible _He_ controlled this as well. In fact, _He_ did. And so everything _H_e did, no matter how harsh it might feel to her, was just to go on proving that._

_She understood. It made sense, really. _

_Even if _He_ ever did one day succeed in killing her, she knew why _He_ would've done it: to prove to _Himself _that even caring for someone, _He_ could still rub them out of reality. _He_ was still in control._

_It made her feel heady; this power. _

"_Power?" Dr. Leland had interrupted her, her frown all the more pronounced._

"_Of course," she'd sat up, wiggling around on the sofa to get upright against the confining bonds of the straitjacket, and stared at Leland, incredulous. "Don'tcha get it? The Joker – the one guy known all over the world for being completely without feeling, entirely devoid of any sorta sympathy or compassion or goodwill toward any joe or dame – and _He's_ gotta hurt me to prove _He_ don't love me! Cos it scares _Him_ that _He_ does."_

That Sunday night, she felt like pizza.

Dr. Leland had permitted her to read certain excerpts from her file, before she was released.

She hadn't gone out that day. One too many glasses of champagne last night and she'd felt ill all day, weighed down with the heaviness of a hangover and the echoing solitude surrounding her. She put on a Liza Minelli album full blast and cleaned her apartment instead.

In those pages, in that fat, bulging folder, she'd read how without The Joker, she was entirely devoid of motive. With _Him_ gone, her desire to live a life of crime simply diminished. How throughout the entirety of their twisted relationship, her ultimate goal had been her own warped perception of reality – marriage, to _Him_, and children. A continuance, however one looked at it, of servitude towards _Him_, positioning herself as the embodiment of _His_ needs and what she imagined them to be, conflating them with her own in her delusion. The Joker's needs, of course, were unknown, _His _motivation uncertain and constantly shifting.

So she simply fixed hers upon _Him_. Whatever _He_ wanted, at a particular time, she would do what she was told in order to bring it about. Because _He_ wanted to commit crime, whether out of some psychotic need to cause chaos, or to draw the attention of The Batman, so too did she. If _He_ ever stopped (as she clearly hoped _He_ would, in order to get her happy ending), then she would as well.

The Joker's disappearance had robbed her of this motivation.

And after that, unravelling the cord of infatuation had been simple. Breaking down her psychosis with the aid of therapy and medication a matter of course. There was no doubt Harleen Quinzel had been a very sick woman, and one with the potential for psychosis built into her, but the person who had manipulated and drawn it out of her was no longer around in order to do so.

With medication and continuing therapy, she should make a full recovery.

As she had.

She had had a pole installed in her living room, so that she could practice at home. She did, that Sunday, for a couple of hours, practicing a hands-free layout, the brass pole gripped tight in her thighs as she stretched her body out in a line parallel to the floor. The other girls all had to use one hand to support themselves.

After that she'd put on Kate Bush and sung along tunelessly to _Wuthering Heights_.

As Dr. Leland had spent countless hours analysing it with her, that infatuation had merely been a symptom of her psychosis, rather than true emotion.

She'd only once questioned that. She'd never experienced such intensity of emotion. Never. If that wasn't love, then what was? What else could it be?

Psychosis, had been Dr. Leland's calm reply. Which they were treating now.

The Gotham Knights Cheerleading Squad were headed for their fourth National Championship trophy in a couple of months' time. It would be her first time since High School going to a national level competition. She'd be on television again, even if she was just one more flipping body in a formation of short skirts and pompoms. Practice times had been upped and tomorrow they were spending a good four hours on choreography.

Still, she felt like pizza. She phoned down to the Ciccolina's.

So she had recovered and she had been released and she had built a life for herself. As Amanda Hart, a cheerleading, pole-dancing make-up artist who wore the colour pink and emblazoned everything with hearts and went jogging ten miles every day. It was a good life. She was anonymous, one more face in the crowd, and yet still enjoyed a sort of minor celebrity that made her feel connected to life, to the thrill of existing.

It made her days not feel so empty.

And she couldn't understand that. It _was_ a good life. The sort anyone could envy. True, she didn't have any close friends. True, she was medicated up to the eyeballs. True, she crammed every day full of ceaseless activity so when she shut her eyes at night the world blinked out almost immediately.

But – wasn't all that just a matter of time? Steadily and surely she had found her place in the last year and carved out her niche. Independent. Individual. Her own.

Everything else would follow.

While she was waiting for the pizza, her wardrobe door, standing half ajar with a jumble of pink and white fabrics bursting through the gap, caught her eye.

She usually waited until just before bedtime.

But she figured she might as well do it now.

She huddled up the back of the closet, and reached into her panties, pulling out the creased, wrinkled piece of paper, unfolding it carefully. It was growing soft along the folds now, threatening to tear apart if she pulled too hard.

Her heart-rate picked up as the green hair came into view, her breath grew short as the eyes were unveiled and she had to swallow hard as the smile was revealed.

So why then this pale, shadowed emptiness in the base of her stomach?

An emptiness which echoed whenever she withdrew that photo and looked at it?

There was a knock at the door. Her pizza, sent up from downstairs. She folded the photo up again carefully and tucked it under the elastic waistband of her pink cottontails.

She wiped her face as she moved through the candy-coloured living room, surprised to find a dampness there. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Shorts and shirt, hair messy, but respectable enough. Her eyes were just a little red.

She did not ask who it was, or check the peephole. She just opened the door.

At first she didn't understand what she saw. It was not Mario, Signore Ciccolina's twelve year old son, standing there with a large vegetarian and garlic bread. There was not even a pizza.

What filled her doorway was tall and thin and violently coloured, the tips of its shock of green hair brushing the top of her doorframe, leaning against it at a jaunty angle with one purple-clad ankle crossed over the other. As she watched it flapped an arm – and she started. It had stood so still it had seemed merely propped up against her doorway, some awful, wretched joke. _This is a joke_, she thought, _and soon I will get it. _

She stared and stared, but it did not help. Indeed, it began to make even less sense the longer she looked at it, its mess of purple and green and orange blurring and running together. She kept on staring, and a long streak of red slashed across the blur of white that was stretched up, up, up so high and far above her head, making her a speck on the ground.

"Hello, Harley Baby." The Joker purred, leering at her from above, one hand tucked into the pocket of _His _orange waistcoat. "Did you miss Daddy? Daddy missed you. So. Much."

There was something warm and wet spilling down her legs as she continued to stare, the thud of her heart a thunderbeat in her head, the whiteness of _His_ face lightning that dazzled her gaze. And _His_ smile – it set off a tremble, a wash of shudderings as lovely as an orgasm, beneath her flesh – it was like the snarl of a panther, readying itself to pounce.

She stepped back as The Joker advanced towards her, slamming the door shut behind _Him_, shrugging off _His_ purple greatcoat and fedora hat and tossing both onto her hatstand, gazing about _Him_ with a glittering purple stare.

"Whew, Harls, looks like a carebear threw up in here," _He_ exclaimed, casting an eye around the pinkness of her small apartment. Her home. Her new life. Her. Amanda Hart. _He_ fixed _His_ gaze on her once more, _His _smile splitting further up _His_ face, holding out _His _lavender gloved hands towards her.

"No kiss for Daddy?" _He_ queried and she finally drew in a breath, it filling her flattened lungs like a kick.

It didn't matter. How _He_ knew where she was, how _He_ had found her, where _He'd_ been all this time. Her years of rehabilitation, of adjusting to normal life, of Amanda Hart and her love of pink and her place on the championship cheerleading squad. It was irrelevant; beauty school and the Drag Queens who forced pink champagne down her throat and jogging ten miles every day. It had all just been a way of killing time.

The hollowness inside her, the one that couldn't be filled with poledancing and gymnastics, with Sunday outings and gentle basketball players, was enflamed and throbbing, suddenly overflowing with that feeling and she felt herself drift forwards, towards _His_ waiting arms.

How had she ever survived without it, its savage intensity, its vicious pleasure and the smell of _Him_ that filled her nostrils as the shell of Amanda Hart shuddered and peeled off of her, leaving behind it nothing but love, love pure and violent and hungry, hungry to be sated by _His_ touch, love that spread upwards from that now-filled place and flooded through every inch of her being. _He_ lifted her, her face pressing against the hardness of _His_ slender chest, enveloped by the silk of _His_ green shirt, suffocated in the smell of _Him_, soothed by the grip _He_ had about her. Suddenly, deliriously giddy with pleasure as _His_ painted lips brushed hers, always the tease, _He_ still smiling in satisfaction and brutal triumph, and she realised with a rush –

All this time, Harley Quinn had simply been waiting.


End file.
